


Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not

by LadySparrow01



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Timeline, Eventual Romance, F/M, Memory Alteration, Mid-Thor: Ragnarok, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Sort Of, kind of, pseudo bookshop au, star crossed lovers, supernatural boyfriend trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-02-13 13:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21495148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySparrow01/pseuds/LadySparrow01
Summary: "Sigourney felt like the world was going to fall out from under her. But she knew, in her heart of hearts, that the words had been true. Loki, Norse God of Mischief, was sitting on her bed holding her hands. More than that, he had all but implied that he loved her." An alternate timeline story set just after the beginning of Ragnarok.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Loki/Sigyn (Norse Religion & Lore)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there. If at any point during this fic you decide it's just not for you, would you please consider leaving a constructive comment on why it is you chose not to continue reading? I am always looking to improve my work and appreciate feedback that I can build from. Thank you so much. And I hope you enjoy.

**_“But Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not and I’ll do to You No Harm.”_ \- The Ballad of Tam Lin**

Time travel is complicated. And messier than even a room full of Geniuses could ever hope to understand. It isn't linear. Or Cyclical. Or even a 'big ball of wibbily-wobbily, time-y, whimey stuff' as someone so eloquently once put it. It is a tapestry of thread woven in a pattern only the Universe understands. The warp threads run through the length of all time, both forward and back. The weft is all creation, moved to and fro, over and under, across and up, across and up, along the warp, locked into place by the beater of the present.

A room full of Geniuses are not weavers at a loom. They may think they know which thread to pull in order to change the tapestry to their design. But none of them have touched a shuttle a day in their lives, let alone stamped a trettle. It's guess work at best when you can't comprehend the pattern. And yes, they guessed fairly well. But when you pull a thread from a tapestry, even if you replace it from whence it came, the tension of the tapestry is forever changed. And this change has a way of playing out in a manner only a skilled weaver may have the ability to spot.

After all, it's so easy to pass the shuttle over, instead of under, a single thread.


	2. In Which There is Tea

The dream had haunted her for as long as she could remember. Sigourney rubbed the sleep from her eyes and rolled onto her back. The ceiling of her bedroom stared back at her as the all too familiar images of the dream wafted through her mind. The gilded chamber, the circular door opening out into a vortex of colour, the raging old man with a voice like the sea crashing against the cliff-face, the heart piercing scream and then, as always, the explosion of colour and light that swallowed everything until only thick blackness remained. That was when she would wake. And no matter how the dream started, it would always end with the scene in the gilded chamber. Sigourney couldn’t riddle it out no matter how she tried. She’d done everything she could think of, sleep therapy, sleep medication, regular therapy, cutting out all caffeine, yoga before bed, jogging around the block when she woke up in the night. But nothing explained the dream and nothing made it go away.

She turned over to look at the digital clock on her bedside table. 5:07am. Somewhere outside songbirds were already beginning their morning concert. Sigourney sat up, her barefeet settling onto the laminate flooring of her bedroom as she tossed her blankets aside. There was no point in trying to sleep for another few hours. She might as well get an early start. She quickly pulled on the jeans she had worn the previous day and her favorite David Bowie t-shirt, the one with the album art from Low. Then she wrangled her long dark-flaxen hair into a high ponytail. Her still bare feet padded softly against the cool floor as she made her way into her small kitchen. Opening the window over the sink let in the brisk autumn air as well as the birdsongs. She filled the kettle, popped it onto the stove and leaned against the counter, waiting for it to boil.

‘_Watched pots..._’ She thought as she stared at the sky blue enamel of the kettle. 

Sigourney turned her attention to the stack of mail cluttering the counter beside her. She had just picked up the first envelope when the unmistakable sound of pawing and whining came from the fire escape. She smiled to herself and tossed the envelope onto the stack of others, then ducked back around the wall that separated her kitchen/dining area from her bedroom/living area. Sigourney pulled back the drapes from the window that lead out to the fire escape and smiled. Fiske, her downstairs neighbor and landlady’s ginger cat, gazed up at her through the glass. She knelt down and heaved the window open from where it latched against the floor. Fiske lazily slipped into the apartment as though he owned the place.

“You didn’t get caught in the storm last night, did you?” Sigourney asked.

Fiske rubbed up against her leg in reply before walking past her into the kitchen. She followed and found her feline friend already sitting on the counter above the drawer where the can-opener was kept. By the time the kettle whistled Fiske had been set up with a small dish of canned tuna and was eating it happily as Sigourney fixed her tea.

“Don’t tell your Mama.” She warned playfully as she stirred sugar into her cup, “She says that I spoil you too much.”

Fiske only continued munching away at his snack. When their mutual breakfasts were finished, Sigourney put the dishes in the sink and pulled on her boots and baggy wine-coloured sweater. Fiske wound his way between her feet impatiently as she rummaged through her bag, hunting for her keys. When she found them the two left the apartment together. Fiske meowed loudly in parting as he scampered down the hall towards the stairs, not even glancing over his shoulder. Sigourney smiled to herself and locked her door. Shoving her keys back into her bag, condemning them to undoubtedly be unfindable for at least three solid minutes the next time she needed them, she too reached the staircase.

It was only a single flight down to the foyer. The building had been, at one time, a old style house meant for a single family. The property had been modified into a kind of apartment building sometime ago, it’s rooms being renovated into full living spaces for the tenants. The main floor had been segmented into three portions. The first was where Mrs Hult lived, the second was her office and the third was the communal laundry room. Sigourney willed her boots to be quiet against the creaky floor as she passed Mrs Hult’s front door, hoping not to wake her. Fiske must have already gone in through the cat flap.

The main door to the house creaked comfortingly when Sigourney eased it open and she was once again greeted by the crisp autumn air. The smell of late September, a mix of decaying leaves and rain, filled her up to the brim. The sidewalk was still stained dark gray from the previous night’s storm. The thunder had shaken the house and the sheet lightning had illuminated the whole sky. Electricity had been palpable in the air. But all that had quieted down into a still and silent morning. Now it was almost as though it had never happened. Sigourney jumped a particularly large puddle as she crossed the leaf and branch strewn street. The park on the other side of the road from the house had really had a number done on it by the storm. The trees, who had already been in the process of shedding their amber and crimson leaves, were all but bare now. A few had managed to hold on for dear life, but they would likely join the others in the next few weeks.

Sigourney loved everything about autumn. It had been her favourite season for as long as she could remember. There was something about the change lingering in the air all around her that made life feel exciting and full. With the sun just barely creeping over the trees, setting their remaining leaves in a glow like fire, anyone would say that there was magic in the air. Sigourney shoved her hands in her pockets and breathed deep as she passed under the boughs of the tall park trees. Above the birds were coming to the end of their morning recital. Looking up, they could be seen flitting between the branches. Today would be a good day. Sigourney was certain of it.

By the time she reached the far side of the park it was nearly six-thirty. The sun was fully up. There was activity on the main road that separated the park from the strip of small businesses on the other side. A few cars drove up and down the street and a jogger in a loose Captain America t-shirt was just passing by the still closed cafe. It wouldn’t be open until at least eight-thirty. Sigourney looked both ways, found a gap in the mild traffic, and crossed the street to where the bookshop sat nestled between the second hand clothing shop and the florist's. As predicted, it was about three or so minutes before she found her keys again in the vacuum of her bag. She shifted through the mess until her fingers closed around them and then shifted through the mess of her keychain until she found the right key. The lock clicked open with a satisfying sound. Sigourney shoved her keys back into her bag and shut the door behind her, flipping the latch of the deadbolt closed now that she was inside.

Normally, she didn’t open the bookshop until ten-o’clock. And it would be eleven before Lavender, her highschool part-timer and only employee, showed up for her Sunday morning shift. Sigourney flicked on the overhead lights which hummed to life slowly. They illuminated the shelves and books in a soft glow. As Sigourney tossed her bag onto the counter she spotted the boxes still crowding the small space behind it. She sighed. At least pricing and shelving all the new material would fill the time until opening. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and set to work.

Halfway through the first big box of new books and a roll of pricing stickers later, Sigourney was singing along with the upbeat playlist her phone was playing. She changed the sticker roll in the price gun and dug out the next arm load of paperbacks. They landed on to the top of the counter with a soft thud. She’d only just picked up the first volume, a dog eared and slightly scuffed copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, when the unmistakable jingle of the bell over the door rang through the little shop. Sigourney turned with a frown.

Shutting the door behind himself was a very tall man dressed in a fine black suit. The dark material contrasted against his pale skin but complemented the raven hair that fell to his shoulders in loose waves. His face was handsome and angular, with a high brow and cheekbones, thin lips, and a sharp jaw. He looked around the shop, almost anxiously, taking in the overcrowded shelves stuffed with second hand books. Then his eyes fell on Sigourney and she could see that they were a chilly shade of green. He smiled at her broadly when she met his gaze, deep lines creasing his lovely face.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed.” She told him in the voice she used for customers, “We don’t open for...”

She glanced at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

“Another hour.” She said, it was only just coming up on nine, “The cafe down the street should be open. You could get a coffee or tea and come back.”

He raised his eyebrows, the smile fading slowly. For an instant, emotion flashed in his eyes. He looked gutted. As though he didn’t know that David Bowie had died and Sigourney had just told him in a crass kind of way. Then it was gone. A forced pleasant exterior rose so quickly that anyone else wouldn’t have noticed. But the joy in his eyes when he’d first entered the shop had vanished.

“Forgive my intrusion.” His voice was smooth and he spoke with an accent that sounded rather English.

“It’s no problem.” Sigourney smiled at him, shrugging a little, “I could have sworn I locked that door. Must have forgotten.”

He studied her for a long moment, then said, “Might I offer to buy you a cup of tea? To make up for not noticing the closed sign on the door.”

“That’s not necessary.” She smiled reassuringly, “No harm done. Really.”

“Is... is this your shop?” He asked tentatively as he looked around again.

Sigourney smiled again, “Yup. I’ve been here for about three and a half years.”

“I see.” He nodded slowly, “Well, I shan't take up any more of your time.”

He turned to go, but stopped just before he reached the door, one long-fingered hand hovering above the handle. Sigourney watched him turn on his heel to face her again. He furrowed his brow a little at her.

“Are you... quite certain I can’t tempt you with a cup of peppermint tea?” He asked slowly.

“Well,” Sigourney gave in, “I suppose that would be alright. But only because you managed to guess my favourite by accident.”

She set down the price gun and scooped up her bag. A wide smile worked its way across the man’s face as she came to meet him at the door. He held it open for her and waited patiently on the sidewalk as she once again hunted for her ever elusive keys. It was odd, but normally Sigourney wouldn’t have accepted a spontaneous invitation from a stranger, even if he had managed to unknowingly offer up her favourite tea. It was just that there was something in that look of utter disappointment he had given her. Something that tugged at her in a way she didn’t understand.

"I'm Sigourney, by the way." She introduced herself as they started down the street towards the cafe.

He frowned a little, "Sigourney?"

"Yeah." She shrugged, "My parents are huge fans."

He looked at her blankly.

"You know... Sigourney Weaver? The film actress?" She pressed.

He only narrowed his eyes a little at her as though he still didn't fully understand what she was on about.

"Anyway, what should I call you?" She changed the subject.

"Locke." He replied, something almost mischievous in the nod he gave her.

At the cafe, Sigourney sat at a table for two next to the large picture window that took up most of the front wall. It made the small space feel bright and airy. The sounds of folks chatting amongst themselves filled the air in a pleasant sort of way. Sigourney chewed her lip as she waited for Locke to return with their tea. He had seemed to know her when he came into the shop. Or he had expected her to know him. That was what the look had been. Or, at least, Sigourney decided that's what it had been. And the more she thought about it the more it perplexed her. She knew she didn't recognize him from anywhere, beyond noticing that he bore a slight resemblance to that very popular English actor whose name she could never remember. Besides, she knew she hadn't ever known anyone called Locke before. Not even as a child. It was an unusual enough name that she would have had no trouble remembering. So, about thirty seconds after he'd left her to fetch their tea, Sigourney had decided to ask him about it when he came back.

She drummed her fingers against the table, admiring the way the light caught on her golden bracelet. The band sat around her left wrist and glinted with each tap, the Norse ruins almost dancing. They spelt out 'ever loved' according to Sigourney's maternal grandmother. Sigourney had worn it for as long as she could remember.

  
Locke returned with a smile and two cups of tea. The scent of peppermint washed over the table, setting Sigourney’s nerves more at ease than they had been moments ago. She watched Locke sit down across from her, unbuttoning his jacket and smoothing the front of his waistcoat. He certainly was dressed smartly. Perhaps he had just come from an early church service? Or a formal family breakfast? Or, given the monochromatic black, perhaps a funeral?

“You’ve likely not eaten anything yet so I’ve also brought you a bit of cardamom tea loaf as well.” He indicated the thick slice of bread sitting on the edge of her saucer.

“How... how did you know I hadn’t eaten yet?” She asked, glancing quickly between him and the loaf.

He shrugged and took a sip of his tea.

“Well, thank you.” She said, trying to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

Maybe he was a witch. He was rather dressed like one.

“I wanted to say that, before in the shop, it seemed as though... as though maybe you... thought you recognized me? Or something?" She started, feeling a little silly, "Or maybe you thought I was someone else for a moment? Have we met before? I’m certain I would remember if we had, but... you seemed...”

She allowed herself to trail off, having migrated from silly to foolish, and watched him carefully. He set down his cup with calculated precision that resulted in only the slightest clink against its saucer. Then he folded his hands and thought for what felt like a long time. When he finally looked up from the contents of his cup his features were totally composed. Calculated, just like his movements, so as not to betray anything.

“What sort of books do you sell at your shop?” He asked in a gentle but deliberate tone, avoiding her question.

She stared at him, a little surprised, then replied in the same tone, “Second hand and donated copies of whatever is still in good enough shape to sell.”

“And do you enjoy it?” He raised his eyebrows and took another calculated sip of tea.

His voice was uncomfortably conversational. Anyone observing them would think they had just run into one another after having gone through the world’s messiest breakup not a month before. Sigourney shifted a little in her seat before finally trying her tea. It was uncommonly good.

“Yes. Very much.” She said, looking over the rim of her cup, “And what do you do?”

“Political Science student.” He replied without hesitation.

“What’s that like?” She asked, the comforting warmth of her cup against her hands.

“Surprisingly taxing.” He flashed her a charming smile.

“Where do you go to school?” Sigourney asked.

“Overseas.” He replied, “Though I did study in New York for a very brief time.”

“That must have been exciting.” She nibbled at the tea loaf, which was also uncommonly good.

“It didn’t go,” He shifted in his chair a little and cleared his throat, “quite as I planned.”

She offered him a sympathetic smile, “That’s too bad.”

“A matter of perspective, I think.” He chuckled and drank from his cup again.

The conversation carried on in that manner until they’d both drained their cups and the tea loaf was gone. Many questions were asked and met with answers that didn’t actually say anything about the one giving them. When they’d finished it was nearly ten o’clock. Locke walked her back to the bookshop, but declined going back in. This, Sigourney thought, was somewhat strange, but she didn’t press the matter. They said a very brief and somewhat awkward goodbye at the door. Then, as she rummaged around for her keys for the fourth time that morning, Sigourney watched her new acquaintance hurry across the street and into the park.

_‘What a curious man.’_ She thought to herself and unlocked the shop.


	3. Wherein the Universe Refuses to Bend to Sigourney's Will

The sun was only just starting to edge towards the horizon as Sigourney locked up the shop for the day. The air had cooled somewhat and a breeze tugged playfully at the tree branches overhead. She noted, as made her way towards the park, that the early evening sky was perfectly clear. There wouldn’t be an encore performance of last night’s storm. As she passed through the park entrance she thought about her odd encounter that morning. Locke. Sigourney couldn’t shake how strange it was that he wouldn’t come into the shop a second time. Surely he had initially come in with the hope of purchasing a book. Or at the very least to browse the shelves. Why else would someone go into a bookshop? What troubled her more was the fact that she had been so certain that she had locked the door behind her when she first arrived. She retraced her steps in her mind for the hundredth time.

“Perhaps I’m finally losing it.” She mumbled to herself.

A magpie in a nearby tree cackled at her.

She stopped walking and raised an eyebrow at it, “Laugh if you like. But I think forces stranger than you or I understand are at work here. I know I locked that door.”

Sigourney had always believed that the world was far more complicated than anyone really understood. Who was to say magic didn’t exist? She had seen enough strange things in her time to doubt that anyone could say for certain that it didn’t. If Superheros were battling it out with killer robots in real life instead of in comic books then surely a door unlocking itself wasn’t all that strange.

She started walking again. The magpie flitted to the next tree, keeping pace with her as she moved down the gravel path. Sigourney frowned a little, stopping again. The bird tilted its head at her as though it were wondering why she had stopped. Sigourney knew that they were rather clever birds, known to sometimes play with humans. Her mind spun, trying to somehow string together the shop door, Locke, and now a bird that seemed to be following her. It had been a very strange day and she was ready to go home.

Sigourney hurried through the rest of the park, keenly aware of the magpie still following her, but decidedly ignoring it. The bird stayed with her until she reached the front door of the house. It sat in a tree across the street, watching her as she collected her mail. Then it flew off as soon as she was inside. Fiske meowed loudly at her from his customary spot on the first step of the staircase. Sigourney reached down to scratch at his ears quickly before hurrying up to her apartment.

The next morning, on her way to work, Sigourney willed her life to go back to its regular old boring self. She breathed deep the scent of autumn and told herself that the events of the previous day were one time deals. The locks in the shop would work. Strange and handsome men would ignore her as they always had. Birds in the park would not follow her home. She would tend the shop, continue shelving the new books, and be ordinary Sigourney once again.

The universe seemed to be complying to her will rather well until about an hour before closing when the shelf holding up a collection of encyclopedias snapped clean in two. It sent its passengers thundering to the floor in a disastrous heep, the resounding bang of which scared the absolute daylights out of everyone in the shop. When the mess had been cleaned up and the handful of customers reassured that everyone was alright, Sigourney and Lavender looked over the damage. Most of the bookcases in the shop had been ‘rescued’ by Sigourney from back alley garbage piles and thrift stores. Those were fine for the harmless paperbacks that hardly put a strain on them but, evidently, something sturdier would be needed for the more robust volumes. There would be no way around it. The newly broken shelf was unsalvageable.

“You know,” Lavender tapped the end of her pencil against her bottom lip as she studied the shop’s financial books, “there’s enough in the supply fund that you could buy a real, proper, bookshelf. Like, a new one.

“Are you sure?” Sigourney asked, turning from where she was watering the plants in the front window.

Lavender raised an eyebrow, “I’m never wrong about math.”

This was something Sigourney knew to be true. Lavender was brilliant when it came to sums. She would do her advanced mathematics homework while minding the counter and complain that it was too easy. Sigourney, who didn’t have a mathematical bone in her body, welcomed Lavender’s insight and support with open arms. It was a blessing to have someone around who not only understood complicated numbers, but who could also explain them in a way she could understand.

Lavender smiled, dimples forming in her round cheeks. She was wearing periwinkle blue overalls, a striped shirt and floral sneakers today. The blue complimented her dark complexion beautifully. Her hair was all but shaved in the back and sides, leaving a mass of black curls on the top of her head. She twisted a strand of it around her fingers, her warm brown eyes intent as they studied the papers before her.

“Okay, I double checked and we definitely have enough for a new bookshelf.” Lavender said, “Remember that big sale last month? We made more than enough to cover the cost.”

Sigourney opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by the sound of the bell over the door jingaling, happily announcing the arrival of a customer. It was Locke. He was dressed exactly as he had been the day before, which added to the strangeness of his return. He smiled. Sigourney smiled back despite the growing feeling that she had not, in fact, willed the universe back into mundane order as she had hoped.

“Hi again.” She said, glancing over his shoulder to look at Lavender.

She was beaming, pointing to him and mouthing, ‘Is that him? Is that the weird tea guy?’

“Hello.” He replied, “I hope I’m not intruding this time.”

“No, not at all.” Sigourney replied.

Impatience got the better of Lavender, who leaned as far as she could over the counter, and said, “Hi! You must be Locke. Sigourney was just telling me all about you.”

Locke turned and half bowed to her, “Is that so? I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

“Lavender.” She introduced herself.

“A pleasure.” He straightened, noticing the bits of broken shelf leaning up against the closest bookcase and the stacks of encyclopedias, “What’s happened here?”

“We were just discussing that very thing.” Lavender smiled.

Sigourney flashed her a look of gentle warning, “The shelf gave out about ten minutes ago, actually. Luckily we’re closed tomorrow so, if I can find a way down to Ikea, I’ll pick up a new one.”

“She doesn’t drive.” Lavender explained helpfully.

Locke turned back to look at Sigourney, “Could I be of some assistance? I am in possession of a vehicle. I could easily act as your transport.”

In a whirlwind that couldn’t be stopped, Lavender and Locke commenced to make plans for the next day. There was no stopping them. By the end of it, it was decided that Sigourney would be picked up from the cafe at ten o’clock the next morning, be driven to Ikea by Locke, accompanied by him while there and then driven back to the shop, new bookcase in tow, so as to drop it off. Sigourney watched the two of them as though they were an impending storm. She leaned against counter and contemplated whether or not she should intervene.

It was curious, but Sigourney noticed that Locke didn’t really address any of his answers or questions to Lavender. All his remarks seemed to be aimed at Sigourney. She wasn’t sure if she would have noticed had she not been watching the two of them carefully. There was nothing rude or deliberately cruel in how he interacted with Lavender, just a sense of desired distance. Perhaps he was shy? It was a solid five minutes before he slowly began to engage with Lavender, looking at her when she spoke and replying to her questions directly. And that was when the conversation really took off. The two seemed perfectly happy to plan out the next twenty four hours of Sigourney’s life for her. In the end she couldn’t see the harm in simply letting them.

Locke ended up keeping them company right until closing. He continued to gradually warm towards Lavender, joking with her and asking her questions about herself. As Sigourney watched him laughing and smiling his entrance into the shop only yesterday played like a loop in her mind. That look of joy mixed with relief in his eyes when he saw her. As though he knew her. And the expression of utter dejection that flashed across his features... it was enough to break anyone’s heart. She didn’t understand it. He had avoided giving her an answer when she asked him about it at the cafe. Yet here he was, offering up rides and being perfectly friendly. The part that really confused her was the fact that it didn’t feel wrong. There were no warning bells or sirens going off in her head, telling her to keep her guard up. In fact, the voice inside her was saying something very different.

“He likes you, you know.” Lavender said in her matter-of-fact tone as she and Sigourney walked down the street together.

They had closed up the shop for the night and parted ways with Locke.

“How can you tell?” Sigourney asked, “You only just met him. I only just met him.”

Lavender shrugged, “I just can. I think it’s something to do with being seventeen. You’re just in-tune with those sort of signals because your body’s going haywire. It’s the way he looks at you.”

“How does he look at me?” Sigourney hugged herself a little against the wind.

Lavender thought for a moment, “The same way Alice looks at me.”

Sigourney smiled, “That serious, huh?”

“Yeah.” She smiled back, cheeks dimpling, “Besides, he’s cute for a boy. And he seems like he’s reasonably normal. I think you should at least try to get to know him a little. But text me a couple times during your Ikea date tomorrow so I know he hasn’t kidnapped you or something, okay?”

“Okay, deal.” Sigourney agreed, then said, “But it’s not a date.”

“Sure.” Lavender scoffed, “Whatever you say.”

They parted at the corner, Lavender turning down towards her mother’s restaurant and Sigourney continuing on to walk around the park. The universe couldn't be weird if she avoided the places it had been weird in. When she got home Fiske greeted her on the stairs, but did not see fit to join her for dinner. So she ate her bowl of butter chicken and rice alone with her thoughts. No matter how hard Sigourney tried she couldn’t keep Locke from drifting into her thoughts. Later, Sigourney lied awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling, as she analysed all of her interactions with him.

“I’m being ridiculous.” She told herself, “Just go to sleep.”

Sigourney rolled over and shut her eyes tight, shoving the whirling thoughts from her mind. When she did finally fall asleep she dreamed she was being lead down a long, golden, corridor at a brisk pace. With her were two people in elaborate armour. One held her tightly by her upper arm, marching her quickly past huge pillars. The other walked in front of them. The ample emerald-green skirts of her gown flowed around her legs as she struggled to keep pace with the guards. Sigourney wanted to ask where they were going, but she couldn’t make her voice work.

The sound of marching footfalls filled the hall slowly. Some kind of procession was coming towards them. She craned her neck to see around the leading guard only to have the grip on her arm tighten. It hardly mattered, though. She could see the procession clearly now. It consisted of six people, armoured in the same fashion as her guards, all surrounding a single man bound in chains. He walked with his head bent and his arms in shackles before him. It was Locke. Sigourney stopped walking.

Suddenly the dream changed. She and Locke now stood alone in the pillared corridor. He looked as he had in the shop. Tall, handsome, and dressed in the fine black suit. He stepped towards her with something like fear in his eyes.

“I will find you.” He told her, his smooth voice on the cusp of becoming panicked, “I promise. I will find you.”

He gently gripped her shoulders as he spoke. His eyes were brimmed with tears. The dream changed again and she was alone in a magnificent garden. Sigourney whirled around, skirts twirling about with the motion, trying to understand where she was. The sharp cackle of a magpie caught her attention. It sat perched on the low branch of a tree, tilting its head as it stared back at her. It’s eyes were green. Then, suddenly, she was in the gilded chamber. The old man stood above her, his voice filling the domed space like thunder. He smashed his golden scepter against the golden dais on which he stood. Then, the swirling vortex of colour opened up in the chamber wall and Sigourney was plunged into it.

She woke with a start. Relief at being in her own bed filled her at once. For a few long moments the dream hung around her like fog. Then, slowly, Sigourney settled into the waking world.

“It was only the dream again.” She told herself, clutching her forehead and closing her eyes, “It was just that stupid dream. You’re fine.”

Sigourney shoved herself up and glanced at the digital clock. 9:43am. She was going to be late. She quickly pulled on her clothes, settling for jeans and a black tee-shirt because they were sitting on the top of her laundry basket. As she was in the bathroom, frantically brushing her teeth, there was the sound of something pawing at her window. Sigourney groaned and rinsed her mouth.

“I don’t have time today Fiske!” She called, “Go try Ms Greenwell, upstairs.”

The thumping, skidding, sound against her window came again. Clearly she would have to shoo him away by hand. Sigourney sighed as she crossed to the window, stopping for a moment to set her bedding to rights as she passed. When she reached the fire escape she drew back the curtains and nearly had a heart-attack. It wasn’t Fiske.

Locke was sprawled out on the metal fire escape, leaning against her window, looking as though something had chewed him up and spit him back out. He banged against glass gently with the heel of his hand, looking up at her. His face was bloody and his hair was unkempt. In fact, he was rather disheveled all over. His smart black suit had been replaced by a rumpled green tee-shirt and close-fitting black jeans. He was barefoot, too, which particularly stood out to Sigourney as being strange.

Sigourney sunk to her knees, leveling herself with him, the window between them, “Wh-what...?”

“Sorry to bother you.” He groaned, voice muffled through the glass, “May I come in?”

He asked it as though he were there to borrow a cup of sugar. Curse her soft heart. Sigourney fumbled with the lock for a moment before opening the window wide enough for him to crawl through. He scooted into the apartment, one arm clutching his side.

"How do you know where I live?!" Sigourney raked a hand through her hair, utterly bewildered, "And why did you climb up the fire escape?! How did you climb up the fire escape?!"

"Does any of that really matter?" Locke asked, wincing as he struggled to get to his feet.

"Yes! It really, really, does matter!" She told him, supporting him under his arm as she guided him into her bedroom, and said half to herself, "This is either very romantic or very disturbing."

"Romantic." He groaned as he eased himself onto the edge of her bed.

She ignored him and hurried to the bathroom to fetch the first aid kit. When she came back he was leaning forward, a grimace on his face, still clutching his side. She knelt down in front of him and opened the kit, sifting through its contents as quickly as she could for everything she would need. He watched her in mild fascination.

"What happened to you?" Sigourney asked.

"I ran into some friends." He explained.

"Your friends did this?!" She nearly dropped the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"Yeah." His voice came out in a tight strain as he moved back to lean against the wall, legs so long they still hung over the edge of the bed, "They don't like me."

“Why didn’t you go to a hospital?” She demanded, scooping up the first aid kit and moving to sit beside him.

“And miss our date?” He closed his eyes, grimacing, tone mildly scandalized through the pain, “Never.”

“It’s not a-” She cut herself off and sighed, still trying to find something to clean away the blood and far too distracted to argue, “Never mind. Hold on, I need a cloth or something.”

Sigourney darted back into the bathroom. She riffled through her tiny linen cupboard until she found a clean dishcloth, then she ran it under cold water and rang it out in the sink until it was damp. The realization of what was happening hit her while she was doing it. She gripped the sides of the sink, forcing herself to breathe.

“It’ll be okay.” She told herself, looking at her face in the mirror, “This is fine. This is totally normal.”

Her blue-eyed and very freckled reflection did not look convinced. She grabbed the scrunchy sitting on the counter and tied back her hair into a messy ponytail. Then she grabbed the dishcloth and went back into her bedroom.

“I think it looks worse than it is.” Locke told her, eyes still closed.

She eased herself onto the bed beside him, “Well, it looks pretty bad. This might sting.”

Locke winced slightly against the sudden cold of the cloth, but didn’t pull away. Most of the blood seemed to have come from his nose and bottom lip, though there was a rather nasty scrape above his left brow too. It merged with the purple bruise that engulfed his eye. The blood came away easily, staining the cloth scarlet. Sigourney focused on her hands as they worked. She tried very hard not to notice the way Locke was staring at her, his green eyes fixed on her face. It was too quiet.

“Tell me what happened.” She forced the words to come out as evenly as possible.

“I already did.” His voice was soft, gentle, “I ran into some friends.”

“You’re always getting into trouble. People who beat you within an inch of your life are not your friends.” She countered.

He smiled, then winced, “No, I suppose they aren’t, are they? You’re very wise.”

“And you are very foolish coming here instead of going to a hospital. I should take you to the emergency room.” She scolded him, cleaning his cheek.

“Oh, please don’t.” He pleaded gently, “I’ve had worse.”

Sigourney tucked her fingers under his chin to turn his face slightly. His skin was ice cold. She jerked her hand away with surprise and Locke stared down at her. She didn’t understand the expression on his face. It was as though he were waiting for her to say something he already knew.

“You’re very cold.” She told him.

“Yes.” He shifted slightly against the wall again, “I know. Don’t worry about it.”

“You could be bleeding on the inside, Locke.” She said, panic beginning to climb up into her chest from the center of her stomach, “I should call an ambulance.”

She moved to grab her phone from the bedside table, but was stopped by Locke’s long fingers closing around her wrist. His grip was gentle and freezing. Sigourney met his weary, very serious gaze with concern.

“It’s fine.” He told her, “I promise you. Please, just continue.”

For reasons she couldn’t explain, she believed him. Sigourney settled beside him again and tucked her fingers back under his chin. She tilted his head slightly to get a better angle on the blood still coating the far side of his mouth. When that was clean she moved onto his neck, raising his chin so she could see better. He held very still while she worked and the two fell into heavy silence again. When his face was clean she returned to the bathroom to rinse and re-wet the cloth. Then she cleaned the blood from his arms. They were mostly just bruised, through there were a few scrapes. His knuckles were grazed badly and slightly swollen. At least he’d fought back, then. When all the blood had been cleaned from Locke’s skin, Sigourney soaked a cotton pad in hydrogen peroxide.

“I’m afraid this is going to sting.” She told him, moving closer.

When the pad was lightly touched to the scrape above his brow, Locke jerked away and swore sharply, “What is that!?”

“Disinfectant to clean your cuts.” She explained, “I know it hurts. Sorry. It’s all I have.”

He sighed and re-positioned himself against the wall, “I hate this planet."

“What?” She couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Nothing.” He shook his head slightly, a faint smile on his lips.

He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. It was a very different image than the charming and well groomed man who had walked into Sigourney’s bookshop only just the other day. He was paler, if that was even possible, and in addition to the massive bruise there were purple smudges under his eyes. His face looked thinner too, gaunt even. As Sigourney gently applied the hydrogen peroxide to Locke’s face, making his lips quirk with each touch of the cotton pad, she couldn’t help but notice the scar across the bridge of his nose. Apparently having his face smashed in was something that happened semi-regularly. It was a wonder he was still so handsome. Sigourney finished disinfecting his cuts and did her best to patch them up. Locke watched her, eyes never once leaving her face, as she wrapped his grazed and swollen hand in a bandage.

“I didn’t think political science students were the sort to land themselves in fist fights all the time.” Sigourney told him.

He chuckled, then winced again, still holding onto his side, “You’d be surprised.”

“Who are you? Really.” She asked, not looking up from his hand.

She could all but feel his eyes on her when she asked it. And she was convinced that whoever the man laying across her bed was, he was not a political science student. Or if he was, there was more to him than the precious little he had told her.

“This isn’t one of our games.” She went on, “So be serious, alright? Do you know me? I asked you before, at the cafe, and you changed the subject. But I know you must.”

“What makes you say that?” He leaned forward, his breath catching ever so slightly with the motion.

“The way you looked at me when we first met.” Sigourney refused to meet his eye, instead watching her own fingers wrap the bandage around his hand, “You know where I live. And you came here instead of doing something practical like getting real help. I only just met you the other day and yet you seem intent on spending every moment of available time in my company. You know things about me. And I feel...”

“Feel what?” He stilled her hands by covering them with his own, his touch cool against her skin.

Sigourney finally looked up, “Confused.”

His eyes searched her face for a long time. He was trying to decide whether or not he should tell her what he knew. She could see it. Sigourney wished he would just get it over with and explain everything. The fact that his face was mere centimeters from her's was incredibly distracting for reasons she didn't want to think about.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” He asked, dodging the question yet again.

Sigourney would have scoffed right in his face if his tone hadn’t been so completely and entirely serious, so she said, “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” He raised his eyebrows a little, “It’s a simple yes or no answer.”

“Do you?” She studied his face for something, anything, that said he was joking.

“Yes.” His tone was so matter-of-fact it nearly hurt.

“And now you’re going to tell me that this, what’s happening here with you and me, is love at first sight. You wandered into my shop, saw me and your heart was plucked from your chest, right?” It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Why not?” He asked, tilting his head to one side slightly.

“Because my life isn’t a book written for teenage girls,” Sigourney told him plainly, “as enchanting and lovely as those stories are. This sort of thing doesn’t happen. Not to me.”

“It is happening.” He replied, still serious to the point of being funny, “It’s happening right here in front of you.”

“And this sudden and undying love is what lead you to my house and gave you the strength to climb up my fire escape despite the fact that, I’m pretty sure, you have at least one broken rib?” She asked, trying to make it sound as ridiculous as it was.

“In a manner of speaking.” He replied.

“Don’t lie to me.” She moved to pull away, loosing her patience.

His grip on her hands tightened ever so slightly, stopping her completely, “I’m not. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

“Is Locke your real name?” Sigourney demanded.

“No.” He told her.

“Then what is?” She furrowed her brow, not sure if she should be angry or scared or both.

“It’s Loki.” He said, his eyes never once leaving her's, “Loki of Jotunheim and Asgard.”


	4. In Which They Visit Ikea

Sigourney felt like the world was going to fall out from under her. If anyone else had spoken the words she had just heard, she would have laughed in their face at such a blatant lie. But she knew, in her heart of hearts, that the words had been true. Loki, Norse God of Mischief, was sitting on her bed holding her hands. More than that, he had all but implied that he loved her. Her stomach was practically in her throat and her hands trembled in his. Though, she couldn't be certain if that was from fear or the fact that his touch was glacier.

"Please say something." He said, a hint of panic in his voice, "Siggy, please. Say something."

"You...?" She started, then faltered, "Siggy?"

He blinked at her, "Do your friends not call you Siggy?"

"I-" Sigourney spluttered a little, "I don't have any friends. Don't change the subject!"

"I'm not. I'm not." Loki said, hurriedly.

Sigourney had seen the footage of the attack in New York and of the aftermath that followed. She knew what the man before her had done. In that moment, though, it was hard to believe he was the same person. He hardly looked like the interplanetary war criminal who's laughing face had plastered every screen in the world.

"Tell me why I shouldn't call SHEILD right now and have them dump you on Tony Stark's doorstep?" Sigourney asked, her voice hardly more than a terrified whisper, "I saw the footage from Stuttgart. I heard your big speech. I know what you think of humans. What you must think of me."

Loki's jaw clenched and he swallowed hard. He shut his eyes again. Sigourney's heartstrings twanged painfully within her chest. There was something in his sallow face that spoke of a great change between New York and this moment. She would have thought him almost sorry. A wave of compassion washed over her despite the fear still bubbling in her stomach. Curse her soft heart.

"You're hiding, aren't you?" She asked gently.

He nodded.

"I'm not going to call anyone." She said, trying to sound calmer than she really was, "They'd probably think me mad. And I don't actually know how to call SHEILD. But I do need to know everything before I get dragged into whatever this is. Like, how did you find my house? How did you know where I live?"

"I followed you home through the park, that day I came into your shop." He told her quickly, "My intentions were honorable, I swear. I wanted to ensure your safety."

Sigourney felt her throat go dry, "You... you were the magpie?"

He nodded again.

"And did you also unlock the front door of the shop that day? Using magic or something?" She asked.

"I did." He admitted.

"Never again." She told him, voice firm, "You never do anything like that to me, or anyone else, ever again. I'm a person. You ask for my permission so that I can decide whether or not you're invading my privacy. Alright?"

He nodded again, looking very much like a child who had just been scolded, "I understand. And I am sorry."

Sigourney touched her hand to his cold cheek and turned his face towards hers. He didn't meet her gaze. Instead he covered her hand with his own, pressing it tightly to his cold skin. Sigourney couldn't help but be a little taken-aback. His dark hair fell across his features when he turned his face further into her palm. She could feel his breath against her hand, his lips against her skin. It wasn't a kiss, but it was very close to being one. She studied his face again, more carefully this time. His brow knit together as he squeezed her hand to his cheek. It looked to Sigourney as though he had been craving this sort of a touch for a long time and was now savouring every second of it. He was lost. And he was still clutching his side.

"Forgive me." He mumbled into her palm, his eyes fluttering open as he reluctantly released her hand.

"It's alright." She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way, then she gestured to his side, "I think I'd better take a look at that."

Loki nodded as he gingerly let go of his torso. Then he slowly pulled up the bottom of his shirt, flinching at the motion. Sigourney had always thought that 'bruised black and blue' was nothing more than an expression. She was wrong. The entire right side of Loki's abdomen, from his hip to his chest, was covered in bruises so dark they made the rest of his skin look alabaster by comparison. Sigourney covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a gasp. Judging from the grimace on Loki's face it was painful just to breathe.

"You should lie down." Sigourney said through her fingers.

Loki nodded again, his breath coming out in sharp, suppressed, whines. He re-positioned himself and very slowly stretched out across the bed. His feet still hung over the edge. Sigourney seated herself close beside him, her leg pressed up against his uninjured side. She gingerly pulled the fabric of his shirt up further to get a better look. He clenched his jaw, face scrunched in pain, and made a sort of choking sound in the back of his throat. Sigourney had never seen anything like it. She also had absolutely no idea what to do. The first aid training she had taken in high school, nearly seven years ago, escaped her completely.

"Can you... break a rib?" She asked, hands hovering uselessly over his abdomen, "I mean, is that something that's even possible? For an... an Asgardian?"

"It is." He groaned, voice tight, "But I rather doubt that anything is broken."

"Are... are you sure?" She stammered, "Because it looks pretty bad. Do you want an ice pack?"

He let out a slow shuddering breath, then said, "Laying here helps. I just need to rest. I'll be fine, I assure you."

Sigourney helped him pull his shirt back down, covering the mess. She moved to leave, but Loki's hand found hers. He looked half asleep already, lying stretched across her floral bedspread. His long fingers intertwined with hers lazily.

"Don't go, Siggy." Loki mumbled.

"Siggy again?" She whispered to herself, shaking her head.

Everyone she knew called her Sigourney. Everyone. Even her parents. For as long as she could remember that had been it. No nicknames, no pet names, nothing but Sigourney. So where was 'Siggy' coming from? She didn't mind it. On the contrary, it felt... right... when he called her that.

Sigourney shook the thought from her head and added it to the ever increasing list of ways her life had become strange over the past forty-eight hours. Loki, the prankster God she had read about as a child and the warrior who had brought New York to its knees, was asleep in her bed. The fact that he had given her a nickname should not have been the most confusing part of her day.

At the very top of her list of questions sat the most daunting. Why her? Loki could have chosen anyone in the world. Anyone in the universe. It was a globally known fact that he hated humans. So why was he here in her bedroom? Sigourney was certain it had to do with how he had looked at her upon their first meeting. The smile that seemed to say he was overjoyed to see her and that wave of disappointment that followed. As if it pained him to his core that she... that she what? Didn't recognize him?

"It's not my fault." She whispered to herself, "You look different without the helmet."

"Do I really?" Loki murmured.

Sigourney hadn't expected him to hear her let alone reply, "Yes. You do."

"Hmm..." He shifted a little, but didn't open his eyes as he said, "Is that good or bad?"

"I don't know yet." She replied, absentmindedly stroking the back of his bruised and grazed hand with her thumb, "Loki?"

"Mmm?" He was nearly out.

"Why did you attack New York?" Sigourney asked.

"I was angry with my brother." He mumbled.

"That... is a very bad reason to attack a city full of people." She told him.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." He almost smiled, "But that's another in a long line of poor excuses, I know."

"Do you regret it?" Sigourney asked the question before she could stop herself.

He was quiet for a moment, then asked quietly, "Where were you? When it happened?"

"Scandinavia." She watched him, "Visiting my Grandparents. Two weeks on a farm in rural Norway and then two weeks in very small Swedish village. I was practically off the grid the entire time. I didn't hear about New York until I got back home. Even then, it's different up here than it is in the States. We get everything second hand so it feels more removed somehow. I guess that's why I didn't recognize you."

"Can you say it again?" He mumbled nearly incoherently.

"What, all of it?" She asked.

"No... no." He squeezed her hand a little, "Just my name."

Sigourney felt foolish, but said gently, "Loki."

A smile tugged at his lips and he squeezed her hand again. Sigourney sat with him until she was certain he was asleep. She was just about to get up and try to leave him again when a dazzling, pale green light rippled across his body. Sigourney's mouth fell open as she watched the light run across his skin. When it vanished again, Loki looked like an even more exhausted version of himself. His cheeks were more hollow, making him look sickly. Scars that hadn't been there moments before appeared on his arms and face. Sigourney couldn't tear her eyes away from his mouth. The scars around and across his lips, thin gashes that connected to deep pox in his flesh, could have only been made in one way. Someone had sewn his mouth shut at one point. Sigourney raised her hands to her own mouth, not believing what she was seeing.

Loki must have been using magic to maintain his appearance. It made sense in a way Sigourney could only just wrap her head around. She supposed that while sleeping he had finally relaxed enough for the spell to give out. She wondered, looking down at his ragged form, how much of his energy was taken up by that magic. If she had to guess, she would have said a great deal of it probably went into ensuring people saw him in just the way he wanted them to see him. This solved another mystery, at least. It explained why he had looked so different from the man who had come into her bookshop just the previous day. His well groomed and polished exterior had been hiding an utter disaster just below the surface the entire time. He'd been too beat up to maintain his facade properly. It made Sigourney's heart go out to him even more.

Loki slept for a few solid hours in which Sigourney fed herself and managed to go through some of her mail. It was just after one-thirty when she heard him stirring. She set down the letter she'd been looking over and walked as softly as she could to peek around the wall into her bedroom. Loki was slowly pushing himself up off of the bed, running a hand through his black hair.

"Are you feeling any better?" Sigourney asked.

He turned and smiled at her, "I am."

Loki certainly looked much better. His colour had returned and his face looked fuller. His injuries had nearly vanished too. Most significantly, though, was that his scars were nowhere to be seen. Sigourney watched him stretch and get to his feet. Evidently, his bruised side had also improved. She couldn't help but wonder how much of that was Asgardian healing and how much of it was the magic he used to keep up appearances. She almost liked his scar-ridden features better. They seemed more genuine than the perfectly calculated face grinning at her. At least his hair was still unruly.

"Good." She crossed her arms and wandered back into the kitchen.

Sigourney still didn't fully understand how she was feeling about him. She had hoped that by the time Loki woke up she would have a better grip on that part of things. Unfortunately, she still didn't. It should have been incredibly simple. She should have hated him or been afraid of him. But she didn't and she wasn't. In fact, she kind of felt sorry for him. A deep compassion had wedged itself right into her heart. It was that feeling that confused her to no end. She would not allow herself to consider what he had said about 'love at first sight' and what that might mean in regards to her.

"Shall we go?" Loki asked, coming to stand in the kitchen with her, "Or do you require a few more moments to prepare yourself?"

"Go?" She looked up at him, blinking.

"To fetch your bookcase." He smiled.

"Oh, ugh." She felt her brow knit together, "I didn't think that we were still going to doing that. Considering, you know, everything."

He raised his brows at her, "Why not? I'm more than fit."

"Are you sure?" She pressed.

"Yes, very." He chuckled and pulled up his shirt, exposing his middle again, "See?"

The bruises looked as though they had already had a week and a half of healing. They were no longer black and deep purple, but rather the light browns and muddy yellows that signaled repair. Sigourney could hardly believe her eyes.

"Well, alright." She shrugged, defeated, as Loki set his shirt to rights again.

"It's rather cool out." He mentioned, plucking her dark green cardigan off the back of a chair, "You may want this."

"Thanks." She took it from him and smiled, noticing that he was still barefoot, "You may want some shoes."

"Huh." He looked down at his feet.

Loki wiggled his toes a little. The same shimmering green light that Sigourney had seen earlier danced over his feet and black sneakers appeared out of nowhere.

"There." He smiled at her, "Problem solved."

As it turned out, Loki's car was a very boxy hatchback that looked as though it were straight out of 1984. Sigourney stood on the sidewalk staring at the dusty black vehicle parked crookedly against the curb. She wasn't certain if she should laugh or run.

"You can drive, can't you?" She asked bluntly.

Loki scoffed, "I have piloted far more complex transportation vehicles than this. I hardly think you need worry."

He sounded very confident. Sigourney's stomach was in knots as she got into the passenger seat. Loki shut her door for her, leaving her momentarily alone as he walked around the car to the driver's side. She fastened her seatbelt and pulled it tight across her lap. It gave her some comfort, at least. Loki got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, making him smile widely.

"You do have a license, right?" Sigourney asked, still gripping her seatbelt.

"A what?" He laughed and pulled the car out from the curb

Loki drove exactly as Sigourney imagined he would: like a total maniac. He was all over the road, swerving around the other cars and screaming through intersections. The world blurred past the windows as they raced down the street. Sigourney pressed herself as far back into her seat as she could, gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles turned white. Loki didn't appear to notice that anything was out of place. He chatted happily, half to Sigourney and half to the road itself, as they barreled down the highway at top speed. When David Bowie's _Scary Monsters_ came on the radio, Loki cranked up the volume and sang along. It was at about that same point when Sigourney realized that they had, miraculously, not actually hit anything or caused an accident yet. Other cars laid on their horns as Loki artfully dodged around them, but no one slammed on their breaks or went wheeling into anyone else. Loki let out a cackling laugh and tossed his head back as they careened down a hill and through a red light, thoroughly enjoying himself.

It was a wonder they reached the Ikea alive. Loki screamed into the lot, found a spot, parked and cut the engine. Sigourney sat in the sudden silence astonished by the mere fact that she was still breathing. She couldn't make her fingers unclench from around her seatbelt. Loki got out of the car and stretched. He popped his hands onto his hips, surveying the large building as though he were planning on buying the entire thing. Sigourney shut her eyes and silently hoped that she would get through the day in one piece. A sudden knock at the car window made her nearly jump right out of her skin.

"What are you waiting for?" Loki's cheerful voice was muffled somewhat by the glass between them.

He was beaming at her as he opened her door. Sigourney tried to return his smile and got out of the car. Together they walked across the parking lot to the main doors of the building. Once inside, Sigourney lead him up the stairs to the display floor. She wasn't even certain what kind of bookcase she was looking for. She would have to see what there was.

Considering it was the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, it was only mildly crowded. Sigourney and Loki followed along the arrowed path with the rest of the shoppers, looking at the furniture set up all around them. She would have thought that it would bore Loki. On the contrary, he seemed rather fascinated by it all, despite his best efforts to seem otherwise. He kept asking questions about mass production, as though the concept alluded him. Sigourney answered as best she could, not really knowing all the details herself. From what she gathered, he was used to incredibly fine, custom made, one of a kind furniture. She supposed it did make sense. Wasn't he, technically, some kind of a Prince? Something that particularly caught his interest were the mock-rooms set up throughout the display floor. Loki spent a lot of time examining the kitchens and bedrooms, opening up cupboards and drawers.

"Is not this the same table in your home?" He asked, contemplating the two person dining set in one of the mock kitchens.

Sigourney couldn't help but laugh, "Well, yeah. I bought it from here."

Loki tried the tap in the sink, looking mildly disappointed when nothing happened, and moved on to the next kitchen. When they finally reached the section where the bookcases were kept the two spent a long time comparing and contrasting the available options. Eventually they settled on a white LIATORP. Sigourney took down the information from the tag all while Loki hovered over her shoulder. Then they followed the arrows through the rest of the display floor until they came back to where they had originally begun.

"Are you hungry?" Sigourney asked, gesturing to the restaurant.

"Yes, but why is it that a furniture vendor also serves food?" He asked.

"I... don't actually know." Sigourney shrugged, taking his hand, "But the meatballs are great. Come on."

Ordering food in the style of a cafeteria line was, like so many things, Sigourney was realizing, a completely foreign concept to Loki. Sigourney did all of the talking, explaining as she went what the pictures and numbers posted on the wall were for. Sigourney payed for the food and Loki carried the tray, following her to one of the many available tables. They sat by the large windows that overlooked the parking lot. Sigourney could tell by the poorly concealed look on his face that Loki was apprehensive about trying the food. She thought it might have helped if the man serving them hadn't just dumped the gravy all over the dish. Still, she lead by example and started eating.

"So," She started, cutting one of her meatballs in half, "I have a question. Actually, I have a lot of questions."

"I'll do my best to answer." He replied, copying her every move as though he were scared of doing it wrong.

She thought for a moment, then asked, "Why are you on Earth? I mean, I thought you hated us."

"Hate is..." He thought for a moment, "too simple a word. My feelings for this realm are far more complex than that. As to why I'm here, I was under the impression we covered that earlier today? I'm hiding, remember?"

"Yes, we did," Sigourney said after swallowing her mouthful, "but I was hoping for a little more detail than that. Earth seems like the last place you would want to hide considering that, after everything, you're kind of the sworn enemy of the whole planet."

"I would think that's putting it rather mildly." He smiled and finally took a bite of his food.

Sigourney watched the expression on his face turn to surprise and then soften. It was almost like he had expected the food to turn to ash in his mouth. She smiled and took another bite of her own meal.

Loki swallowed and said, "To properly answer your question, I'm also here looking for something."

"What?" She asked, curious.

"It's... complicated." He nudged at the green beans incredulously with his fork.

"That seems to be a theme for you." Sigourney pointed out, but smiled.


	5. In Which a Bookcase is Built

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out I completely forgot to post this chapter and skipped right to 'In Which There Are Stars.' Sorry about that. Better late than never, I suppose. Enjoy.

When they finished their meal they disposed of their tray and dishes into one of the return carts before going downstairs to the warehouse. It didn’t take long to find where the LIATORP bookcases were stored. Loki helped her load the two long boxes containing the parts onto one of the flatbed trolleys, then pushed it for her to the self checkout. This was another point of interest for him. Sigourney let him push most of the buttons on the touch screen as well as use the handheld bar-code scanner. She was certain that he would have taken it apart bit by bit to understand how it worked if she’d let him. She managed to stave off his curiosity by buying them both frozen yogurt on the way out.

By all reasoning, Loki’s hatchback shouldn’t have been able to fit both boxes. Sigourney held his frozen yogurt and watched in astonishment as, somehow, he managed to get them both in and shut the trunk without a single problem. Loki brushed his palms together a few times and smiled.

“And you said it wouldn’t close.” He teased.

“It shouldn’t have.” She handed him back his cone, “I say magic is involved. Speaking of which, this has been bothering me all day. Are you technically still barefoot? Or are you actually wearing sneakers right now?”

He chuckled, “The shoes are an illusion. I’m barefoot.”

“Huh.” She thought for a moment, “But the clothes...?

“Are real.” He assured her, “Borrowed from the shop next to yours.”

“So, stolen.” She licked her frozen yogurt, “That figures. Did you get the suit from there too?”

Loki opened the passenger door for her and said, as she got in, “No, those garments are also an illusion, cast over these ones.”

He shut her door gently and walked around the car. Sigourney tried to wrap her head around the fact that Loki had just spent a couple of hours walking around Ikea, like a regular human being, barefoot. He got into the car and brought the ignition to life. Sigourney did her seat belt, readying herself for another bout of his manic driving.

“I have a question for you.” He said as he backed out of the parking space, looking at her instead of over his shoulder, “Why did you say that you haven’t any friends?”

“Because I don’t?” She shrugged.

He finished off his frozen yogurt, driving with one hand, “What about the shop girl?”

“Lavender?” Sigourney was trying very hard not to think about how fast he was flying through the parking lot, “She’s seventeen. And in high school. I mean, I do like her and everything. She’s great. But it's not really as though we hangout on the weekends or spend anytime together outside of work.”

Sigourney had, at Lavender's request, kept her up dated on the bookcase quest, however.

Loki considered her for an unsettlingly long time considering just how fast they were going, before turning his attention back to the road, “I see. I am sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged again, “It’s alright. I don’t mind it so much.”

“Well,” He swerved around a white minivan, “now you have me.”

Sigourney allowed that statement to sink in fully before laughing a little and saying, “I do, do I?”

“I am pleased to see my offer of friendship is amusing to you.” He teased.

“It’s just... unexpected.” She told him.

Sigourney wanted to add that it wasn’t a bad thing, but Loki ducked into oncoming traffic, dodging other vehicles left and right. She latched onto the hand bar hanging above her window, pressing herself into her seat. The only thing that came out of her mouth was ‘Loki! Loki! Loki!’ in a shriek as she stared, horrified, at the headlights coming towards her.

“Opps!” He laughed as he veered back into the proper lane, “There we go.”

Sigourney shut her eyes and felt herself begin to breath again. Her heart hammered in her chest.

“I have to admit,” Loki said cheerfully, “there are some differences between this craft and the ones I’ve piloted in the past.”

The rest of the drive proved to be significantly less terrifying than that moment. They managed to reach the shop in one piece which surprised Sigourney greatly. Loki parked, half on the curb and half off, and jumped out of the car happily. Sigourney followed, legs threatening to give out at any second. He was already opening the trunk by the time she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She hurried to unlock the front door of the shop, frantically rummaging for her keys and cursing herself for not having a better system, as Loki slammed the trunk of the hatchback closed. He picked up the long flat boxes, one under each arm, and followed her inside.

“You can put those, ugh,” She couldn’t help but stare at him, “anywhere.”

Loki set the boxes down in the middle of the open space at the front of the shop. Then he set his hands on his hips and examined them in much the same way he had the Ikea. With his insistence of helping, Sigourney and Loki set to taking all the remaining books off of the broken bookcase. He carried whole arm loads of encyclopedias as though they were flowers. Sigourney supposed it made sense that he would be impressively strong. It had just never really occurred to her before witnessing it first hand. Unlike his brother Thor, Loki didn’t really look as though he could single handedly carry a bookcase outside. He was leanly built and very slender whereas Thor was put together like a lumberjack. Sigourney watched, amazed, as Loki’s slim figure deposited the broken bookcase onto the curb.

After that, the two sat together in the middle of the floor, taking apart the boxes and hunched over the instructions, putting the new bookcase together. Loki was not particularly well versed in working as a team. He got in the way a great deal and was easily frustrated. Sigourney couldn’t help but giggle into her hand, suppressing it as best she could, as she watched him sitting cross-legged on the floor. He swore under his breath and muttered to himself, a screwdriver in one hand, the instructions in the other. There was something oddly reassuring about Loki’s struggle with the furniture.

It made him seem more human.

Frustrated as he was, Loki wasn’t unpleasant to be around. On the contrary, as she looked back on their day together, Sigourney found that she rather enjoyed his company. He could be sweet when his dazzling charm was turned off and the way he clumsily navigated the extremely human parts of her existence was endearing. If he had been someone she’d met at school, if he were an ordinary person like she was, Sigourney felt that she might grow to like him a great deal indeed. She smiled at the thought and gently reminded herself of the insurmountable chasm that sat between them. And then she remembered how he’d implied, just that very morning, that he loved her.

“Can I ask you another question?” She said, voice soft.

“Of course.” He didn’t look up from where he was fastening screws into holes along part of the partially assembled bookcase.

“Before,” She started slowly, not really sure how to ask, “when you were talking about love at first sight and everything. Did you mean it? Do you... love me?”

Loki dropped what he was doing and looked up, his gaze steady on her face, “I do. Very much.”

“But why?” Sigourney shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable, “You only just met me.”

A smile spread across his face, but he said nothing.

“Loki.” She pressed.

“I loved you the first moment I saw you.” He told her, reaching to take her hand, “I know it's difficult for you to understand. It’s difficult to explain. I don’t... expect you to feel the same way.'

It looked almost painful for him to say it.

“Just know that I do. And always will. That’s all we need say on the matter.” He concluded gently and released her hand.

Sigourney’s mind was a blank. She had wanted the information, but now that she had it she didn’t know what to do with it. She swallowed hard and stared at Loki. He had turned back to working on the book case, his face pensive as he continued to silently fight with the screwdriver. He loved her. She could feel it when he told her it was so. Something in her chest had twanged. It was like a slack cord that extended out beyond her body was suddenly being pulled tight. She nearly moved with the motion of it. Sigourney shut off the part of her brain that was trying to tell her what that meant.

Loki changed the subject, saying, “Tell me more about yourself. About your life.”

“I..." It took her a moment to collect herself enough to reply, “I guess there isn’t much to tell. Not really. I grew up here, went to school here, traveled a little. Then I came back because I missed it here. I opened this place and, well, that’s it really.”

“Surely that’s not all.” He pressed, smiling kindly at her, “There must be something more. Details about your childhood perhaps? The colour of your bedroom growing up, for example.”

She shrugged, “It gets... jumbled. I don’t know how to explain it. I never have. Sometimes, if I think too hard about my childhood, it gets mixed up in my head. I can’t really remember the order things happened in. Not in detail, at least. I know the big picture things. When I try to remember something, like that one time I fell off my bike and scraped up both my knees so bad I could hardly walk home, I can’t remember how old I was. Just that it happened one summer before I started high school. I think I was still little, nine or ten maybe, but I remember the bike being blue. I didn’t get a blue bike until I was fourteen. My first one was purple.”

Sigourney wasn’t certain why she was telling him all this. She never talked about her mixed up memories. Not any more, at least. Just as she had for her problem dream that never went away, she had sought out help. But nothing ever came from it. Apparently, she was fine. But it didn't feel that way.

Sigourney thought it best to stop before she got to the really confusing bits. The bits about playing in beautiful, sprawling, gardens that didn’t exist. The bits about hiding under the oak table in an antique library, reading old books with delicate pages. At this point she had mostly convinced herself that those memories, the ones that were completely out of place and impossible, were just things she had dreamt as a very small child.

Loki listened to her clumsy explanation and smiled all the more, “Memories are a tricky thing. Thinking things happened one way only to later discover that they happened in another. Not knowing what is true and what is not. Being so sure of something only to discover it was a lie all along.”

Sigourney only smiled and nodded, taking comfort in what he said. It sounded as though Loki had had his own experience with such matters. It was reassuring. They finished assembling the bookcase together, chatting about the parts of her life that she did remember clearly. She told him about how her grandmother had told her stories from the Norse mythos when she was a child, which made him smile broadly. She told him about other things too. Her parents, her schools, her interests when she was younger. He listened happily, asking questions or pressing for more details. The strange feeling in Sigourney’s chest grew as they spoke until it seemed to matter very little that she and Loki hadn’t met at school.

Then, when the bookcase was finished and in the place of the old one, they re-shelved all the books in comfortable silence. It was remarkable just how much Sigourney’s opinion of Loki had changed since that morning. She couldn’t help but watch him as he carefully set the books in place. The strange kind of compassion she felt was still lodged in her chest, but now she also felt rather warm towards him. She didn’t know if it was because she had spent time with him or if it had something to do with the fact that he said he loved her. What she did know was that she felt as though she knew him. As though she had always known him.

If the adventures of the day had proved anything it was that Loki could be incredibly human. An odd thing to consider when one remembered that, technically, he was an alien Prince and a Norse Deity. Perhaps ‘human’ wasn’t the right word. Perhaps ‘person’ was more fitting. Loki was, in fact, a person. And Sigourney rather liked him a lot.

She gently declined his offer of a ride home from the shop. Sigourney had had enough of Loki’s driving for one day, not to mention the fact that she didn’t want to think too hard about where he had gotten the car. Instead, they parted on the sidewalk out front the bookshop for the second time since their meeting. Sigourney thanked him for all his help and allowed herself to be talked into seeing him again the next day. It wasn’t a hard sell.

As she lay in bed that night, Sigourney thought back over the events of the day once again. She was now, by his declaration, friends with Loki. Not the man who had laid waste to a city because he was mad at his brother, but the vibrant and friendly trickster who had stood out in the stories her grandmother had told her as a child. Sigourney wondered just how much of those stories were true. She also wondered what would happen to her if anyone found out she was spending time in his company. The words ‘interplanetary war criminal’ as well as ‘aiding and abetting’ lit up in her mind like a neon sign. Then came the image of herself in some prison that didn’t technically exist, being asked questions she couldn’t actually answer about the nature of her relationship with Loki by men in dark suits. Sigourney shut her eyes tight and ignored the question she was too afraid to think about. Who had beaten and bloodied Loki that morning?

Eventually her mind drifted into dreams. She was back in the antique library she only half remembered, under the oak table with a sizable book. Sigourney dragged her fingertips lightly across the glossy pages, watching the illustrations twist and curl before her eyes. She was hiding from something, she couldn’t recall what exactly. Then her father’s boot-clad feet appeared beside her and she remembered. He knocked on the top of the table before stooping to look at her. He sighed as he took in the sight of her, stretched out on her belly, reading. He looked strange, dressed in a dark blue tunic, his hair long and his lined face bearded.

“You said you would at least make an attempt today.” He told her, more sympathetic than stern.

She shrugged at him.

“You did promise, you know.” He raised his eyebrows at her, “You can’t stay in this library forever.”

“Mother does.” Sigourney heard herself say.

“That’s because it’s my duty.” Came her mother’s diplomatic voice from somewhere beyond the table, “Listen to your Father. Go outside. Make friends.”

“You did say you would at least try.” Her father looked at her pointedly.

She sighed and pushed herself up onto her elbows. As she crawled out from under the table the dream changed and she was back in the gilded chamber. The old man slammed his scepter against the surface of the golden dais, the metallic sound ricocheting through the large room. Everything started spinning. The wall behind Sigourney opened up into a riot of colour and light. Her scream filled the chamber as the world dissolved into colour all around her once again. This time, though, something was different. The blinding colour broke apart until it formed countless points of light within a black expanse. They were stars. Sigourney was looking up at the night sky. Then, she awoke to the sound of birds singing outside her window.


	6. In Which There are Stars

Sigourney sat on her floor, leaning against the side of her bed, head in her hands. She couldn’t understand why the dream was suddenly different. Why, after years and years of relentless sameness, had it decided to change? Anyone else would have shrugged it off as nothing but a quirk of dreaming. As something that was liable to happen given the fluid and unpredictable nature of dreams. While Sigourney’s dreams were fluid, they were also always completely predictable. No matter what occurred at the beginning, they always lead to the gilded chamber and ended in blinding colour. For that colour to melt away into stars in a night sky... it made no sense. Sigourney shuttered and dug her fingers further into her mass of wavy hair. She didn’t understand what this meant. What had she done differently? What had changed? She sat up straight and let her hands drop to her sides.

Loki.

Loki was different. Loki was the only significant change in her life. As if by cue, there was the sharp rap of knuckles across her front door. The sound made her jump and her eyes flew in the direction it had come from. Sigourney didn’t know how she knew it was him. She just knew. She could feel his shape through the wall and door separating them. She could see him without seeing him at all. The fictional cord in her chest pulled tight again, extending out through the wall and the door. Sigourney shut her eyes and forced herself not to think about it. It was deeply unsettling. There was a second, less certain, knock at the door. She got up and answered it.

Loki stood there expectantly. He was still barefoot, his long hair still untidy, and his face still mildly scuffed. He was wearing a dark green sweater, though, with the sleeved pushed up to his elbows in a most attractive way. He smiled sweetly at Sigourney and the discomfort she’d felt only moments before melted away.

“I trust you slept well?” Loki asked as she stepped aside to let him in.

“I had an odd dream.” She told him, shutting the door softly, “Something about an old library and a sky full of stars.”

He smiled again, “By all means, regale me.”

Sigourney looked at him for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. Should she? The dream felt connected to him in a way she couldn’t explain. It had changed after she’d met him. He had even been in one a few nights ago. She remembered him being marched down the long corridor, bound in chains. Something nagged at her. There was a force inside her head clamoring to understand what was happening. This felt like a kind of start. Sigourney nodded, led him into the kitchen, and put the kettle on.

The story seemed to come out all at once. Sigourney told him everything about the dream in as much detail as she could remember. She leaned against the kitchen counter, speaking of antique libraries and her father dressed in strange clothes. When the kettle came to a boil she fixed the tea and the two migrated to the table. There she told Loki all about the dream she’d been having for as long as she could remember. His fingers clutched his teacup as though he were afraid it might run off. Sigourney tried not to think about it as she plunged on. She described things in as much detail as she possible could, explaining the parts she could remember clearly. When she finally came to the end, Loki looked almost as though he’d seen a ghost.

"What do you think it means?” She asked him, her voice filling the sudden silence that had settled around them.

Loki blinked a few times before drinking deeply from his cup, once again avoiding having to give an answer.

Sigourney frowned down at her own cup, “You always do this. I hate it.”

“Do what?” He choked on his tea a little.

“You know perfectly well what I mean.” She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed, frustrated with him, “You always go quiet when you don’t want to give me an answer.”

He shifted in his seat and rested his hands on the table, “I know.”

Sigourney opened her mouth to tell him how much his silence hurt her when she was suddenly struck by a wave of _deja vou_. She stopped and stared at him as the sensation washed over her. They had been standing in a large room with polished marble floors, arguing this very thing, as people dressed similarly to one another worked at laying a massive golden table. She and Loki had spoken in harsh whispers in their attempt to not be overheard. His hair had been shorter then. When the sensation passed she shut her eyes tight.

“We’ve had this argument before.” She mumbled half to herself, “Why do I remember... never mind. I’m just being foolish. It must have been part of the dream.”

“You aren’t being foolish.” Loki told her in a gentle voice, “I cannot lie to you, Siggy. That is... not always a blessing. I have little choice but to hold my tongue when I think a truthful answer would cause you grief. I know it irks you. Forgive me.”

“Why can’t you trust me to decide what will grieve me or not?” She asked, “Loki, I...”

_I love you. Why must you hide these things from me? I would not have given you away, though I might have tried to talk you out of your foolishness._

That was what she had told him in the hall with the massive dining table. Sigourney shut her mouth to stop the words from escaping her lips. Loki’s fingers lightly touched her arm. They were freezing. His brow was furrowed in concern as he looked at her. The dream had left her out of sorts. That was all. She shoved the scene in the large chamber aside and tried her best to focus on what was happening around her.

When she trusted herself to speak again, Sigourney said, “I feel strange. My mind is all muddled up and I don’t know why.”

The familiar scratching and pawing sound of Fiske at the fire escape window filled the apartment. Sigourney was grateful for the excuse to get up. So far things had not gone the way she had hoped they would. She was making a mess of things. Loki, unfortunately, followed her into the bedroom.

“It’s just my neighbor’s cat.” She explained, unlatching the window and opening it.  
Fiske slipped inside with a happy meow. He rubbed up against Loki’s pant leg before darting off into the kitchen.

“He want’s breakfast.” She shrugged, standing.

"May I?" Loki gestured to the bookshelf.

"Sure." Sigourney smiled and went into the kitchen.

When she came back from serving Fiske canned tuna, Loki was perched on the edge of her bed tentatively leafing through a comic book about himself. He furrowed his brow at the brightly coloured pages of Loki: Agent of Asgard. Sigourney watched him for a moment, unable to keep herself from smiling.

"What do you think?" She asked.

"Well," He sighed and looked up at her, "It’s rather encouraging to know that there are people in this realm who believe me deserving of redemption."

"When you said you can’t lie to me..." Sigourney sat down beside him on the bed, "Is it like it is in this?"

She pointed to the pages Loki was holding between his hands.

"Like how it is with Verity, I mean?" She explained.

"No." He reached out, putting the comic back onto the bookshelf without needing to sand up, "From what I gather she can see through any lie that's told to her. With you it’s different."

"How?" Sigourney hoped he wouldn’t go quiet again.

Loki took her hands between his, staring at them rather than meeting her eye, "I physically cannot lie to you. I don't know why, but I can't. I look at you and it is as though I'm compelled to speak only the truth or else keep silent. It's not something I understand. I think it’s part of why I..."

"Why you what?" She pressed gently.

"Of why I fell in love with you." He looked at her and smiled.

This again. Her stomach fluttered at the words and she wished it wouldn’t.

“Can’t you see how confusing this is for me?” She asked before she could stop herself, “I don’t understand why you think you love me, why you say you can’t lie to me. I don’t understand why I dream of the things I do or even what they mean. But I do know that you are at the heart of it all.”

Everything that had built up over the past few days was crashing down all around her. It poured out of her like a flood and made her cry. Sigourney hadn’t realized just how badly she’d been fighting to keep from drowning in all that had happened. There was a wall in her mind threatening to give out at any moment.

“I look at you, Loki,” She went on, “and I’m so certain of something it hurts. But I don’t know what. I don’t understand why I feel like this about you. I should be afraid of you. You should hate me. But I’m not and you don’t. Why me? Of all the people on Earth, why did you choose me?”

Loki pressed Sigourney’s hands to the center of his chest and touched his forehead to hers. He was quiet for a long time. She wasn't going to let him back out of giving her an answer this time. If he changed the subject or danced around the questions she would just ask him again and again until he relented. She could feel the beating of his heart against her palm. It eased her whirling feelings somehow, like a point of grounding.

“I want to tell you.” He said so softly Sigourney had to strain to hear, “I want to tell you everything, but I have no way of knowing what will happen if I do. I don’t know how to undo what’s been done and I fear that the only person who did is dead. She would have known what to do. She always did.”

Loki pulled her into a hug. His arms wrapped around Sigourney tightly, pressing her to him, her head against his shoulder. This was right. Like when he called her Siggy. It felt like it was how things should be. She closed her eyes, filled with the weight of his arms against her and the feel of his chest rising and falling steadily. She could hear his heartbeat through the fabric of his sweater. It’s pounding was the rhythm of some long forgotten melody she had known all her life. How had she forgotten this sound? The invisible cord sprouting from her chest finally eased and Sigourney could no longer deny what it was tethered to.

It was a long while before either of them moved. For the first time since meeting Loki, Sigourney could think clearly. His embrace had somehow caused all her troubles and fears to melt away. She didn’t understand it, but that no longer seemed important. It was just another thing to add to her long list. A list that could be dealt with later.

Sigourney shifted her thoughts to the things she did understand. She knew that, for whatever reason, Loki was here. She knew that he loved her. And she knew that she shared something with him that bound them together more tightly than anything she’d known before. Sigourney slowly pulled away from him in order to see his face.

The scrapes and bruises from just the other day were nearly healed. Sigourney wondered why Loki didn’t hide them the way he did his scars. She could almost see the rough marks lingering just under the surface of the face he was wearing. He looked so tired. Sigourney touched her fingertips to where she knew the scars around his mouth were. His skin felt smooth under her touch. Another illusion.

“Do you truly think it best that you don’t tell me what’s going on?” She asked him gently.

He nodded, “Yes. It would be better if you came to it on your own. Safer, I think. You’ve already started.”

Sigourney had no idea what he meant by that. She supposed, though, that it was something she would just have to accept. In order to talk to her about these sort of things Loki had to do it in a roundabout way. She would just have to work at deciphering what he meant by the things he said.

“Alright.” Sigourney nodded, “I’ll try.”


	7. Wherein Loki has Trouble with His Sleeves

It was remarkable how quickly Sigourney fell into a kind of routine with Loki. They saw one another nearly every day, meeting up for tea or else running an errand. Days turned into weeks and autumn continued its slow march. The air grew steadily more frigid, the leaves were shorn from the trees and September gave way to October. It felt as though Loki had always been present in Sigourney’s life. In a way, she knew he had. He featured in the stories her grandmother used to tell her and in the comic books she read.

Occasionally she would lie awake at night, mind full of 'what-ifs.' What if someone recognized him? What if he really was as bad as the news reels had made him out to be and all this was some kind of plot? What if she was under some kind of spell? But then she would go for a walk with him and listen to the way he talked about the sky. Or they would sit on the floor of her bedroom listening to her record collection. She would see the way his face creased when he laughed or the way his fingers tapped along to the rhythm of a song she liked. And her fears vanished as though they had never been. What was more, Loki never pressed her on the matter of his feelings for her. He never expected her to show any kind of affection beyond the platonic. And he never asked for any more of her attention than a friend might. The more time she spent with him, the more she found she liked him.

Sigourney sat behind the counter in the book shop, leafing through a copy of _Shakespeare’s Sonnets_. She occasionally glanced up at Loki as he paced along the first bank of bookcases. He seemed agitated, constantly pushing the sleeves of his green sweater up and looking out the windows at the front of the shop. He stopped to flip through a copy of something lying amongst the potted plants on the table by the windows, but discarded it quickly and resumed his pacing. If he didn’t stop soon he’d wear a trench into the floor. Sigourney had already asked him what the matter was. He’d brushed her off with a half-hearted shrug and a wave. He looked as though he were going stir-crazy.

“It’s a beautiful day, you know.” Sigourney tried her best to sound casual, “I could put up the ‘back in a bit’ sign so we could go for a walk.”

Loki stopped his pacing and looked at her for a moment, ringing his hands. Then he shrugged again, shaking his head. The shrug caused his sleeves to slip past his elbows. He shoved them up, impatiently, muttering to himself in a harsh voice. Evidently, the sweater was not an illusion like his fine suit had been. Sigourney owed herself five dollars. She had been convinced the garment was a result of whatever glamour Loki possessed.

Sigourney reached out a hand to him, smiling, “Come here, I’ll fix it.”

Loki crossed the distance between them in three long strides. He sat down into the chair beside her looking utterly defeated. Sigourney took one of his arms and pulled the sleeve of his sweater all the way down. She folded the sleeve back onto itself until the wrist-hem was above the crook of his elbow. Then she did it again, starting from the fold she’d made halfway up his forearm. The result was a perfect cuff around his upper arm that would keep the sleeve from sliding down again.

“There, that’s better.” She told him and started on his other arm, “Now, tell me what’s got you so worked up.”

He sighed, “I rather not trouble you with it.”

“You’ve just spent the past half-hour pacing around the shop like a madman. I can’t help but be troubled by it and I don’t even know what it is.” She kept her voice kind but firm, “You might as well just explain as best you can. Or is it to do with the things I need to figure out on my own?”

“It’s... related.” He admitted, “You recall how I called on your hospitality when I was injured some weeks ago?”

“Yes.” Sigourney tried not to smile, “I don’t think I’ll forget that in a hurry. You said that your friends were the ones who’d done it.”

“They don’t much like me, I’m afraid.” He said, watching her hands as she folded up his sleeve, “I saw them again while on my way here. They didn’t see me. At least I don’t think they did. I don’t know.”

“If they did and found you here,” She said softly, with patience that was meant to comfort herself just as much as him, “would they try to hurt you again?”

“I barely escaped last time. They would kill me if they found me again... or worse.” He explained.

Sigourney’s hands lingered on his upper arm when she’d finished with his sleeve, “What could be worse than them killing you?”

“I can think of a great many things.” He told her.

The bell above the door jingled, causing both Sigourney and Loki to jump. It was only Lavender, though, toting her backpack with a stack of books under her arm. She slowly came to a stop when she noticed the startled pair staring at her. Lavender raised an eyebrow at them and crossed the rest of the way to the counter. She dropped her backpack unceremoniously onto the floor before setting her books down neatly. She glanced at Sigourney’s hands on Loki’s arm, a knowing smile forming on her bubble-gum coloured lips. They matched her top and sneakers.

“Get a room, why won’t you?” She smirked.

“You’re early.” Sigourney said, dropping her hands.

“Actually, I’m late.” Lavender pulled her phone out of her pocket and waggled it a little in the air, “It’s well past four. I would have been here sooner but there’s some kind of demonstration or protest or something happening a few blocks down.”

“What?” Sigourney stood up.

“Yeah, look at this.” She fussed with her phone for a moment, then passed it across the counter.

The picture on Lavender’s screen was of a woman and man standing together in the middle of the road. The woman was tall and athletic looking. She wore a plain red tee-shirt and dark jeans, her black hair pulled up into a high ponytail. The man next to her was rotund, dressed in white top, orange cardigan and grey pants. He could have been a lion with his mass of wavy ginger hair and matching beard. Lavender slid her finger across the screen and a new picture came up. This one was of two men. One also had long black hair, though he let it hang down well past his shoulders. He also looked very athletic and was wearing a black tee-shirt, dark purple pants and a leather jacket. The other was blonde and slender, his hair and goatee perfectly kept. He was dressed in a full suit of sunflower yellow. They too were standing in the middle of the road. The four of them looked to be stopping cars as well as passers-by, talking to them about something the pictures didn’t show.

“The crazy thing is that they talked like something out of Shakespeare.” Lavender nodded to where the book of Sonnets was sitting on the counter, “Maybe it was some kind of street production in modern dress? I dunno. It was strange, though.”

“Do you recall what they were saying?” Loki asked, his voice tight.

Sigourney glanced at him. He’d gone pale and his hands were clenched so tight they were trembling. In fact, he looked as though he might be sick at any moment. Loki didn’t take his eyes off the screen as he waited for a reply.

Lavender shrugged, “Not really.”

His appearance was enough to tell Sigourney that these were the ‘friends’ he had seen on his way to the shop. From the look of them, it wasn’t a wonder they had beaten him to a pulp back in September. The four people seemed incredibly formidable. Sigourney tried to picture them in armour, weapons drawn. It was enough to make anyone nervous.

“They seem familiar, somehow.” Sigourney said, flipping between the two images.

She could feel Loki’s eyes on her as she said it.

“Really? I thought so too.” Lavender said, then shrugged, “Maybe they’re a local group or something. I dunno. It was weird, but I’m here now.”

She picked up her phone and tucked it into her pocket. Loki stood up so abruptly that he nearly knocked over his chair. He ducked around the counter, starting towards the door with a mumbled ‘I have to go’ and not so much as a glance over his shoulder. The shop door shut with a sharp clack behind him before Sigourney could say anything. The bell jingled then fell silent.

Lavender turned slowly from the door back to Sigourney, one eyebrow raised, “What’s up with Locke? Did you guys fight or something?”

“No, nothing like that.” Sigourney replied, hugging herself a little, “He’s been odd all day. You should have seen him twenty minutes ago. I think he’s just... having a bad day.”

“Bad day aside, how’s it going with him?” Lavender came around the counter to sit in Loki’s chair, “You two seemed kinda cozy when I showed up.”

Sigourney smiled and absentmindedly started stacking some of the books strewn across the counter, “Whatever do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." Lavender rolled her eyes, "You hardly spend five minutes apart."

"So?" Sigourney shrugged, knowing full well the smile plastered on her face gave away any hope of playing things cool.

Lavender shrugged back, "It's just good to see you so happy for once."

Sigourney had assumed that Loki would eventually come back. He didn't however, and as the day drew on she started to worry about him. He had seemed very upset even before Lavender had shown up with pictures of strange people. Sigourney wondered, idly turning through a magazine as she sat behind the counter, if Loki was now in some kind of danger. Surely staying put at the book shop would have been better than running off alone? She sighed, flipping another page without really seeing what was on it.

The bell at the door jingled and Sigourney nearly sprang out of her skin. A man in a dark suit stood by the door, surveying the shop, as he removed his sunglasses. A warning bell went off in Sigourney's mind and her stomach shot up into her chest. Everything about this too generic man, from his close cut sandy blonde hair to his too well-meaning smile, screamed 'government official.' She had to grip the edge of the counter to keep her hands from shaking as he slowly approached the desk with the measured ease of a Dad at his kid's soccer team barbecue.

"Hi there." He flashed her that easy smile, raising his hand in a sort of wave.

Sigourney opened her mouth and nothing came out, she cleared her throat and tried again, "Can... can I help you with something?"

"This is a nice shop." He looked around again, "My niece would love it. Been here long?"

"Three and a half years." Sigourney said, trying to make out the shape of a gun-holster under the lines of his suit jacket, "Or there abouts."

"Huh." The man nodded, still smiling, and turned his gaze back to Sigourney, "It's a nice neighborhood, isn't it? Pretty quiet."

Sigourney nodded.

"Though," The man said with yet more casual ease, "I was at the bakery earlier and there was some kind of commotion on the street. You hear about that?"

"Ugh, yeah. Yeah we did." Sigourney glanced to where Lavender was standing by the windows, pretending to water the plants.

Her eyes were big and her usually rosey undertone had gone somewhat pale.

Sigourney looked back at the far-too-generic man, "It was some kind of _Shakespeare in the Park_ thing, wasn't it?"

"Is that what it was?" The man frowned in a contemplative sort of way and looked out the front windows for a moment, "Huh, how about that."

There was a beat of silence where in Sigourney thought her heart would explode out of her chest.

Then the man said, "You wouldn't happen to have a copy of _Venetia_ by Georgette Heyer, would you?"

"Umm." Sigourney flipped through the open inventory catalog on the counter, "No, sorry."

"Ah," The man shrugged, "well that's too bad. I was hoping to pick it up for my niece. Would it be alright if I left my card? You could call me if you get a copy in."

"Sure." Sigourney nodded, fighting the urge to glance at Lavender again.

The man reached into the chest of his jacket and pulled out a business card. He handed it to Sigourney with a smile.

"Oh, and you know, if you happen to see that Shakespeare in the Park group again, give me a call." He said cheerfully, "I'm a big fan of modern productions and would love to catch them if I can."

"Okay." Sigourney nodded, "Sure."

"Thanks. Have a good one." The man smiled, gave them another wave, and left the shop.

Both Sigourney and Lavender let out their breath.

"He was weird, right?" Lavender asked, "Like, that wasn't just me? He was weird?"

"Yeah," Sigourney nodded, looking down at the business card in her hand, "He was weird."

"Like, he was definitely a Cop or something." Lavender shook her head and turned back to the plants.

The business card was plain white with a no-nonsense type face that read _P. Coleson_. Under the name was a phone number with an area code Sigourney didn't recognize. She tucked the card into the top drawer of the counter, her fingers trembling.

"Yeah, something like that." She agreed, feeling like she might pass out.

Whoever this P. Coleson was, he absolutely wasn't interested in Georgette Heyer or Shakespeare. But he was interested in Loki's 'friends.' Sigourney could feel it in the center of her chest like a weight. He was the sort of man who would sit across from her at a table in a windowless room, asking too-calm questions about the nature of Sigourney's relationship with the war criminal Loki. She was certain of it. And it made the back of her teeth hurt just thinking about it.

A little later, near to closing, the phone rang.

Lavender answered it cheerfully, "Fidelity Books, how can I help you?"

Sigourney had to remind herself firmly that P. Coleson could not possibly be on the other end. Then she tried to quash the blossoming hope that it might be Loki asking for her. Logic told her there was no way he would know how to operate a telephone let alone know the shop's number. Lavender started answering questions about their inventory, 'yes they had Austen' and 'no, they didn't carry much Dickens.' Sigourney bit the inside of her lip and left the desk to straighten out the shelves.

As she set the books to rights, she thought about just how depended she had become on Loki in such a short time. It irritated her to no end. She had never been an overly clingy or needy person. In fact, she was just the opposite. She was solitary to the point of causing detriment to her social life. Wasn't her distant nature the reason she had fallen out with all of the people she spent time with in High School? She was constantly being told she needed to be more social, to spend more time with other people rather than shutting herself away in her own company all the time. Loki had changed all that, somehow, without her even realizing it. And now she was agitated like a teenager waiting for her crush to call. She hated it.

Walking home that evening, Sigourney told herself in no uncertain terms that she wasn't to expect Loki waiting on her doorstep for her. She would only be disappointed. She was anyway when she got home and he wasn't there. But Fiske was there, waiting impatiently at her door to be let in and given his second dinner. Sigourney was glad for the company.

As she and Fiske ate in silence a magpie landed on the rail of Sigourney's balcony. She stood up, her chair scraping against the lamenet floor with a hollow whine that made Fiske spring up off the table.

"Loki?" Sigourney called.

But the bird flew off again before she was even half way to the window. It wasn't him. Her chest went tight and her eyes stung with an onset of tears she didn't understand. She bit them back, pressing her lips tight together until the sensation eased. Then she took a breath, sat down, and finished her dinner.


	8. In Which There is a Significant Lack of Loki

The next three days passed painfully slowly. Sigourney kept her mind busy by reorganizing all the shelves in the shop. She moved the romance section to the far back corner and the historical fiction closer to the counter. Then she reshuffled all the books so that they were shelved chromatically as well as alphabetically. When that was done, she changed her mind about the historical fiction and swapt it for classical literature.

On the fourth day, she paced up and down the open space of the shop as Lavender watcher her, silently concerned, from the counter. Outside rain pounded down over the sidewalk and street. It turned the windows a blurry grey that seemed to darken the entire shop. It also deterred any costumers that might have proved a useful distraction.

"Did he say anything before he left?" Lavender asked, finally breaking the silence.

"No." Sigourney replied, arms folded tight over the middle of her dark blue sweater, "No, he didn't."

"And," Lavender ventured carefully, "he didn't leave you some way of contacting him? No phone number?"

"He doesn't have one. A phone." Sigourney replied, her boots making the old wooden floor under them creak.

Now who was going to wear a trench through the middle of the shop?

"I'm sure he's fine, you know." Lavender offered kindly, "He's a grown man. He can take care of himself."

Sigourney could only nod as an image of a very battered and bloodied Loki lying across her bed filled her mind's eye. She tightened the cross of her arms, pressing them into her stomach to keep it from doing nervous gymnastics. She was becoming cross at herself for being so deeply affected by his absence. And she was also cross at Loki for putting her through emotional torment. She was certain he had a good reason for vanishing without a single word. But still... she did wonder. More time passed. A few more days, then a week, then two. October drew on and still there was no sign of Loki.

Sigourney was occupying herself by clearing out the broom cupboard that served as the shop's only real storage space. She sat on the floor of it, sorting through far more cleaning supplies than such a small shop probably needed. As she worked, her mind was a paranoid internet browser with too many tabs open, three of which were playing music and adverts at the same time.

What if Loki had simply gotten board of her? He was, after all, a Norse deity who's track record of interacting with the human race was less than stellar. She could, Sigourney decided, understand if he had to run off to deal with his 'friends' or some other supernatural issue. That wasn't really any of her business, after all. But if he had just gotten board with her, well, she didn't think she could handle that at all.

Not after he had told her that he loved her.

Sigourney shoved the mop-pail out of her way far more roughly than she had meant to. It gave a metallic clatter against the floor, then a solid thud as it was stopped by the side of a cardboard box. Sigourney swiped her face impatiently with the back of her hand, angry at herself for letting a few tears escape. She opened the box and found that it was full to the brim with some of her Hallowe'en decorations. The other box was, she knew, open on her living room floor, its contents already half put up around the small apartment. Sigourney took a breath to steady herself and decided how she would spend the rest of the day.

By closing, Sigourney and Lavender had tastefully decorated the shop for the impending holiday. Orange, black and white bunting was strung up across the tops of the windows. Ceramic and vinyl pumpkins of varying shapes and sizes were set out in attractive groups around the counter and front table. Black paper bat silhouettes were stuck to the windows along with stars and a crescent moon. And small lights in the shape of ghosts were strung along the front of the counter, winking on and off slowly. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make the shop feel in spirit with the season.

"If you need to talk," Lavender said, a little unsure of herself, as Sigourney locked up the shop, "you can always text me or something. I won't mind."

"Thanks." Sigourney turned to her, dumping her keys into the abyss of her bag, "I'll keep that in mind."

The air in the park was crisp, biting at Sigourney despite the jean-jacket she wore over her sweater. She knew she should have put her mits and toque into her bag that morning, but she had been distracted. At least it wasn't raining any more. She shoved her hands into her pockets and fast-walked along the gravel path through the unsettlingly quiet park. When she passed the thicket of trees that could just barely be considered a woods, she heard the sound of bickering voices cutting through the still air. Sigourney stopped in her tracks, looking for the source of the commotion.

A ways beyond the tree-line a small group of people were huddled together, arguing. If it had been summer, they would have been completely hidden by the thick brush and greenery of the woods. But in the autumn, they stood out starkly against the barren grey shapes of the trees. The sight of them knocked the breath clean out of Sigourney's lungs. She knew them. They were the people Lavender had taken pictures of days ago. And they were all dressed exactly as they had been in the photos. They were Loki's 'friends.'

Sigourney didn't know why she did it. All the while a voice in the back of her head was screaming at her to stop, to turn and run as fast as she could to her apartment. But her feet wouldn't listen. She crept forward, taking slow, careful steps towards the trees. The closer she got, the more she heard. Lavender had been right, they spoke strangely.

"Do not think that I will relent so easily!" The woman with the long dark hair was saying, "This task was entrusted to me -"

"It was entrusted to all of us." The rotund man with the ginger lion's mane interjected, his voice kind, but firm.

"Is that so?" The woman scoffed, "For it seems to me that you have little interest in anything other than what Midgardian fare you manage to get your hands on."

The blond man in yellow put both his hands on the rotund man's shoulders, an arm across his chest, holding him back, "Easy friends."

He looked pointedly at the woman, "Easy."

Then his gaze fell just above her shoulder and his face quirked with surprise. Without a word, the other three followed his line of sight. They all stared at Sigourney with a combined weight that made her knees go weak.

"Oh, perfect." The rotund man sighed, "That's just what we need. A Midgaurdian."

The third man, the one in purple, said slowly, "Is not that..."

"No. Couldn't be." The blonde replied, then he frowned a little, "Or is it?"

"My word." The rotund man breathed, "I think you're right."

"Silence, all of you." The woman ordered.

Sigourney didn't wait around to hear any more than that. She turned and bolted, her jellied legs suddenly pumping against the gravel path. The wind filled her ears and whipped her hair out behind her. It bit at her cheeks, freezing her lungs as they gasped for air. She didn't stop running until she reached her doorstep.

Shutting the heavy door behind her, Sigourney flipped the deadbolt and pressed both her palms against the smooth wood as if bracing it against an attack. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. She sucked back air and waited. But nothing happened. Tentatively, she lifted her hands away from the door. Sigourney realized then, as she stood there with her trembling hands still in the air, that if Loki's 'friends' had wanted to stop her, they would have done so easily. They had let her go.

She couldn't shake the way they had stared at her, however. Even as she discarded her coat onto a chair and filled the kettle she could feel the way their collective gaze had scorched her. Sigourney rubbed her hands over her arms in rapid movements that scrapped the acrylic of her sweater against her skin. The kettle whistled. She turned off the burner and hoped she would never have to see those people again.


	9. Wherein a Conversation is Had

A heavy knock startled Sigourney out of sleep. For a disoriented moment, she was convinced that it was the people from the park come for her at last. She sat up, clawing her wavy hair out of her eyes, heart beating faster than could possibly be healthy. There was another knock. She drew in a sharp breath that nearly choked her. Then her brow furrowed. No interplanetary hit-squad would be dumb enough to knock before doing unspeakable things to someone, would they? Sigourney glanced at her clock. 3:27am. She scootched to the edge of her bed, setting her feet lightly on the cool floor.

If it was them, if they wanted to hurt her, they would have just kicked the door out of its frame like it was cardboard. She stood up and tip-toed towards the door. A third knock sounded, then another, and another. Each was more desperate than the next. A rational part of her mind that had been filed away for far too long told her that it was probably one of her neighbors. That something had happened and they needed help. Even still, she looked through the spy-hole just to be safe.

It was Loki.

Sigourney unbolted the door and flung it open with far more strength than she had intended. He stood there, still slightly disheveled, looking down at her with mild surprise on his face. Without thinking she flung her arms around his middle, pressing her face to his chest. His entire body was ridged for a moment, then he relaxed and his arms wrapped around her. Knowing that he was alright opened a flood-gate of emotion in Sigourney's chest. She pulled out of the hug just as quickly has she had thrown herself into it.

"Where have you been?" Sigourney hissed, trying to keep her voice down for the sake of her neighbors.

Loki gave her a weary smile, "Shall I tell you over a hot drink?

Sigourney frowned up at him, "Don't try to be cute with me. You disappeared with no warning, no explanation. And now here you are at three in the morning, as if nothing happened. I have half a mind to shut this door right in your face."

"Ah." He slipped his hands into the pockets of his black jeans.

Sigourney could only stare at him. Her insides were a writhing pool. Fury seemed to be at the surface of the chaos for some reason, now that relief had gotten out of the way. If she had been asked why she was so angry, she wouldn't have been able to explain it. She just was. She was so cross with him she couldn't think straight. Sigourney hadn't ever been this upset with someone in her whole life.

Or had she?

A strange recollection of being young and blistering with rage filled her mind. Had she been standing in a garden? It was early afternoon and she was yelling at someone.

"What were you thinking?" The words left her lips before she could stop them, "Do you have any idea how reckless and unfeeling you were?!"

Loki blinked at her looking as though he had just been slapped. Sigourney felt her face go hot. The anger in her stomach was swallowed up by the sickly grasp of guilt and drowned in a deep pool of embarrassment. Had they had this fight before? No. No, of course not. Sigourney stepped out of the way, letting Loki slip into the apartment. It would be no good to have this discussion in the hall where it might be overheard. She shut the door softly behind him, taking a slow breath.

"I've upset you." His smooth, soft voice filled the quiet of the small room.

Sigourney's throat went tight. She knew if she tried to speak again that she would burst into tears. So she crossed her arms tight and nodded. Loki sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. He looked so tired. It hung in his eyes and around his shoulders as he stood staring at the floor, trying to think of what to say. Sigourney studied him, forcing herself to ignore the pangs sounding from her soft heart.

She had to be objective or else how could she ever look her reflection in the eye again? Yes, it would have been so easy to melt. To wrap her arms around him, hold him tight, run her hands through his hair. She wanted to. But she wouldn't let herself give in. Sigourney was starting to realize just how soft hearted she had been all along. She had been living in a daze and was only just beginning to see clearly.

Loki leaned against the kitchen counter, and tucked a strand of his long hair back behind his ear, "To answer your questions: I was dealing with a small problem. I thought I was protecting you."

He paused, staring hard at the floor.

Then he said, voice tight, "And no, I hadn't any idea that I was being reckless or unfeeling."

"Where did you go?" Sigourney managed.

Loki looked up, his eyes silently pleading with her to let it go, "You know I can't tell you that."

Bubbles of irritation boiled under the surface of Sigourney's skin, "How convenient that is."

"Siggy," He implored, "please try to understand."

"No, _you_ try to understand!" She jabbed a finger towards him, "You just walked into my life one morning and changed _everything_. I am basically harboring an interplanetary criminal wanted by the world's most secretive organization and the _Avengers_! You know that, right?"

She paused, becoming panicked by her own words as they tumbled out of her mouth.

"I don't have super natural abilities." Sigourney went on, "I'm not like you. If this goes bad for some reason, I end up in a windowless room while nameless men in suits erase the fact that I ever existed. I don't even have a lawyer. I understand that you can't tell me certain things, really I do. But think what that must be like for me. I have no idea what you're up to when we aren't together. For all I know, you could be orchestrating some hostile take over of the planet. So, please, tell me why you're here."

"I am hiding." He closed his eyes as he spoke, his grip on the counter behind him so tight it cracked the tiles.

"Right." Tears burned in the corners of her eyes as she swallowed hard, "Because it makes perfect sense to hide on the planet your brother personally protects. It isn't as though there aren't trillions of other places to go in the galaxy. Not that I would really know. And as I recall, you didn't tell me you were hiding. I guessed that you were and you agreed."

"Haven't we been over this all before?" He kept his eyes closed, his head tilted back so his face was to the ceiling, "Something about dumping me on Tony Stark's doorstep comes to mind."

"I hate it when you use my words against me." She told him flatly, "You know that."

"Do I?" He finally looked at her, raising an eyebrow, "Think. When was the last time I did that, I wonder?"

"I... I don't know." She shook her head, suddenly defensive.

"Yes, you do." His gaze was intense as he pushed himself away from the counter, like he wanted something so badly it hurt, "Think about it. Don't just brush it aside."

Sigourney didn't want to think about it. She didn't want any of this. She just wanted her old life back. It was as though there was a wall in her mind that was slowly beginning to crumble. And she was terrified of what lay on the other side. She didn't want this. She didn't want to acknowledge the memory creeping up the back of her neck. She had been standing in a gilt corridor. And they were fighting again. They had been fighting a great deal lately. Sigourney shut her eyes tight against the image.

"You said..." She felt Loki as he came to stand over her, "You said that..."

His hand settled lightly on her shoulder. She shrugged it off, eyes snapping open at his touch.

"You said that you were also here looking for something. What?" She demanded, fighting to bury the disorienting memory.

She could see his mind working as he said, "I want to tell you, but I can't. Remember? I told you I didn't know what would happen if I did. But think. Really think. Deep down you must know why I'm here. Don't suppress it. Don't fight it, Siggy. Just think."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She felt tears run down her face, "I don't know what you want from me."

She walked backwards away from him and collided with the dining table. She groped for the chair, sinking slowly into it once it was found. Loki dropped to his knees before her, a desperation in his eyes so strong it could be felt in the air surrounding him. The cord in Sigourney's chest strained against the overwhelming need to fall into his arms. She shut her eyes again, fighting it.

The smooth, soft touch of something rather like linen had brushed her fingertips. She wadded the fabric of her long skirts into her hands, squeezing it so tight her fingers hurt. Sigourney stood in the gilt corridor, staring up at Loki as she quarreled with him. A serving person turned round the corner and they both fell quiet, not wishing to be overheard.

"Tell me what you see." Loki's voice was gentle, "What do you remember?"

"Nothing." She shook her head, opening her eyes, "Just something from a dream."

"Tell me all the same." He pressed, "Close your eyes and tell me what you see."

Sigourney was so tired of fighting. Loki reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. He held her face between his hands, his touch cool and reassuring. She gave in, letting her eyes fall closed once more.

"We're standing in a long hallway." She told him, "A servant has just gone into the room ahead of us. He bowed to you as he passed. I'm... I'm upset."

"Why?" Loki asked, "Do you remember?"

Sigourney nodded a little, "I'm being sent away. I don't want to go. I want to stay with you, but you say it's too dangerous. I'm upset because I thought you would let me stay."

"I can't." Loki's voice was soft, diplomatic, "We are at war. You said so yourself, 'the Jotuns are dangerous.' I cannot let you stay here. The risk is too great."

"Do not throw my own words against me, Loki. I know what I said." She told him without thinking, "If you had listened when I said them, than perhaps we would not be at war."

"This war is Thor's fault, not mine." He said, remorse colouring his tone.

"Are you so certain of that?" Sigourney's eyes fluttered open, surprised at the words as they left her mouth.

Loki studied her face, taking in her features with an expectant gaze.

"I don't understand." She shook her head, breaking free of his light hold.

"I know." He said.

Sigourney covered her mouth with both hands. Her mind raced faster than she could comprehend. It felt so real. She could hear the way their hurried whispers had echoed softly down the length of the corridor. She burst into tears.

"Siggy." Loki breathed.

She couldn't stop herself. It was all too much. She let herself slip from the chair and into his arms. He hugged her tight, holding her against his chest. She cried into the place between his neck and shoulder as his hand wove into her hair. They sat there on the floor of her kitchen for a long time while her feelings poured out of her. Loki wrapped himself around Sigourney like a protective blanket against her own sorrow. And a part of her hoped he would never let go.

When she finally stopped crying, Loki pushed her hair back from her eyes and wiped her face gently with the heel of his hand. Then he kissed her brow. His lips were cold against her skin. It scared Sigourney how badly she wanted this. It made the center of her chest ache. But her mind wasn't clear enough to let her have it. She placed her palm against his shoulder and slowly pushed him away. Loki didn't resist. Away he went, leaning back to give her space.

"I... I can't." She managed.

"I understand." He told her, voice smooth.

She took a shaky breath, preparing herself, "I need time to sort things out. Time alone."

"I understand." He said again, this time his tone somewhat reluctant, "I'll leave you, then."

She nodded, unable to say any more, and they untangled themselves. Sigourney hugged herself in an effort to keep her feelings from seeping through her skin as she stood with Loki by the door. His face was drawn in lines of concern when he looked at her, but he didn't argue any case for staying.

"May I call on you tomorrow?" He asked, opening the door.

She nodded, "But here. Tomorrow night. Not at the shop."

"I shall see you then." He turned to go, then stopped and turned back, "Sleep well, Siggy."

And with that he was gone.


	10. Wherein Things Are Remembered

Sigourney didn't go to work the next morning. She awoke at 8:17am, remembered all that had transpired only a few short hours ago, thought about the prospect of facing customers, and promptly texted Lavender not to come in that day. Then Sigourney went back to sleep. When she woke again at 12:23pm she lied in bed staring up at her ceiling. Absentmindedly, her fingers played with the bracelet around her wrist as her mind turned over and over and over.

The memory of arguing with Loki had been so strong. He had even known what to say and when. But Sigourney knew it couldn't have been real. Could it? No, she was being ridiculous. Of course it wasn't real. She had lived her whole life as any ordinary person might. She had done swimming lessons, had braces, nearly failed her high school math diploma, gone to grad without a date, and studied library sciences in collage. Those were all deeply ordinary, unremarkable, pedestrian things. But when she thought about them too hard... things began to go hazy.

She couldn't remember any one specific swimming lesson. They had all sort of blurred together. She didn't really remember the math diploma exam, just that she'd nearly failed. Collage was a montage of studying in the library and sitting at various desks in classrooms that all sort of looked the same. Sigourney had never thought much about the fact that this was how her memory worked. After all, her whole life had been like this, hadn't it?

She frowned up at her ceiling. If she could remember individual moments from working in the bookshop, than why not the rest of her life? She had always assumed that things blurred with time, but perhaps she was wrong. She had never really thought about it before. But Sigourney could distinctly remember moments in her life since opening the shop. She remembered unlocking the door for the first time, unpacking boxes of books, hiring Lavender. Each memory was clear and distinct. So why not the rest of her life?

She thought back, trying to pinpoint the exact moment things became blurred. She remembered watching the news reel of Lagos that spring. And from Sokovia the year before. And in 2013, three years ago, she had watched wide eyed as the news had shown portals to other worlds being ripped open in the middle of London. She remembered these moments with precision, where she was and what she had been doing.

Sigourney flung off her blankets, too agitated to keep still any longer. She dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a black cardigan. She made herself a cup of tea, drank less than half of it, then dumped it down the sink and left the apartment. She needed to be in the open air where she could think. Her apartment was stifling, the walls too close together suddenly. Outside the chilled wind caught her hair and swept it across her face. She brushed it aside, walking without taking note of where her feet lead her. Sigourney's head was too full of questions and half memories to pay attention.

When she found herself in the center of the park, Sigourney felt she had made a mistake letting herself navigate on auto-pilot. She could not keep the image of Loki's 'friends' arguing amongst themselves in the woods out of her mind. Sigourney stood for a few moments, trying to decide what to do. She supposed that if she kept away from the woods and stayed on the public path, she'd be safe. It wasn't likely that a group of aliens would attempt to do her harm in full view of the neighborhood. Would they? As she sat herself down on a bench she decided that, really, she had no idea what a band of aliens would or wouldn't do. It made her chest hurt just thinking about it. She didn't know anything. At least not about matters such as these. She had been pulled in over her head and was close to drowning.

Sigourney's head swam.

She had been running, her bare feet kissing the grass so lightly it was as though she might fly. The day was bright and warm. And she had her hand clasped over her mouth to keep her laughter from spilling out. Her other was locked firmly in Loki's.  
Sigourney shut her eyes tight, trying her best to hold onto the image. She needed to understand.

They had run until they fell laughing in the grass under the shade of a large tree. Their tree. Loki cackled with laughter and Sigourney squealed as tears of joy filled her eyes. They laughed until their stomachs ached, caught their breath, looked at each other, and then burst out laughing all the more.

"The look on his face!" Sigourney managed, "I shouldn't laugh, but I can't stop!"

Loki mimicked the shocked, hilarious expression that Thor had made when he opened the armoury, sending the flock of birds inside shooting right out the door over his head. Sigourney doubled over, laughing so hard she could barely breathe.  
Sigourney beamed at the memory. She touched her fingers to her mouth, opening her eyes. She'd always loved the way Loki's eyes danced when he laughed.

Sigourney had hovered uselessly by the door of the healing chambers. All she could do was watch, twisting and untwisting the fabric of her skirts. She watched as Loki sat perfectly still before his mother. Her long, graceful fingers tenderly plucked the thread from his lips. He didn't so much as flinch, but gave a soft whine once or twice.

Then, she was in a long corridor, her upper arm in the grip of a guard. She watched as Loki was lead past her. He was bound in chains, his mouth locked behind a muzzle. When he saw her, his eyes went wide with pain. He stopped in his tracks, halting the procession. Sigourney tore herself free from her guard. Loki shrugged off his own handlers and raised his shackled arms as high as he could to catch her embrace. She never reached him. Two guards grabbed her. They pulled her away down the corridor as she screamed. Loki's handlers piled onto him, preventing him from following after her.

Sigourney's chest ached. She sucked back a shaking gasp, pulling her knees up to her chest.

She had been standing in the middle of a field, disoriented. She stumbled, her balance so off-kilter she nearly fell head over ankles. There were patterns in the ground. Patterns she felt she should know, but didn't. She'd been in a car accident, hadn't she?

Sigourney pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. People stared. A man in an Iron-Man t-shirt took a step towards her cautiously.

"Miss, are you alright?" He asked.

"Just fine." She launched to her feet and fled.

She needed to get away, to be anywhere but there. She needed to be alone. Her boots pounded the dry, brittle grass as she turned off the gravel path. The park led her down a slight hill to the deserted pond. Not even a goose graced the shore. Sigourney dumped herself onto a large, flat stone. It chilled her trough the fabric of her jeans. Her breath caught in her throat as she sat there, her mind churning. She didn't understand, but it all felt so real. So absolutely real.

The sound of footfalls crunching the grass on the hillside behind her made her jump. Clarity washed over her and Sigourney whirled around, suspecting that Iron-Man t-shirt had followed after her.

"Oh, just leave me be!" She shouted before she saw who it was.

The tall, dark haired woman from the woods stood on the hillside like a warrior of old. Her wide stance invoked an unshakable power and an unmatched confidence in herself. It made Sigourney's stomach flip.

"You." The woman's voice matched her posture.

Sigourney couldn't move. She was rooted to the spot.

"So this is where you are. I didn't see it at first, that day in the woods, but I do now. I see you, Sig." She said.

"I... I don't understand." Sigourney blurted out, "Who are you? Do you know me?"

The woman stared at her with a gaze working to decifer what it saw. She seemed... hurt, or at the very least disappointed. Just like Loki.

"Who I am does not matter." The woman told her after a moment of consideration.  
Sigourney swallowed hard, her hands trembling, "What do you want?"

"To warn you." The woman said, voice dripping with certainty, "To become entangled with Loki now is to doom yourself. More than you realize. I do this only in friendship, Sig. If you do not heed this warning, I can promise only that you will once again be pulled down by that snake's wickedness. You were freed of him. Don't be a fool and fall back into his net. Save yourself."

The woman's gaze was so poignant it stung. Then she turned and hiked back up the small hill. Sigourney watched her go, stomach full of icy fear that stopped her breath short. The woman was so familiar, beyond the pictures on Lavender's phone and the moment in the woods. And she had seemed to know Sigourney. 'I do this only in friendship, Sig.' The words burned at her thoughts.

Sigourney had sat at that woman's side when they were little more than teenagers. She had been sobbing, her hair golden but sheered nearly to the scalp. When Sigourney put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her, she shrugged it off roughly.

"Don't touch me, snake lover!" She snapped.

"Sif, I swear I didn't know he would do something like this." Sigourney told her, "If I had, I would have-"

"What?" Sif wiped at her eyes impatiently, "You would have stopped him? Or would you have sat by and watched like you did when he stabbed Thor?"

Sigourney didn't know what to say.

Sif glared at her, "I thought we were friends. Just leave me be."

It was all too much. Sigourney's head ached. She slid from the rock, landing in a heap in the dead grass. It was impossible. This childhood she was remembering, this life, was impossible. She had grown up on Earth, she'd gone to school, ridden a bike, lost her baby teeth. Just as everyone she'd ever known had. She was human. When she got a paper cut opening her mail it bled. Her father had driven her to school every day. Her mother had helped her with her homework.

Hadn't they?

Sigourney tired to remember the last time she had spoken to her parents. It had been last week. Or perhaps the week before? She tried to remember calling them, but couldn't. Not specifically. All that came to her was a series of similar conversations, pleasant and causal and so nondescript she couldn't tell one from the next.

"I need to go home." She told herself.

Sigourney pushed herself up, stumbling to her feet. She trudged back up the hill and picked her way back through the park. When she finally reached her building, it was as though she had done nothing but walk for days. She clung to the wall in the foyer for a moment to steady herself.

Mrs Hult's front door opened then and an elderly man stepped out, Fiske bolting past his legs and up the stairs without so much as a glance. The man spotted Sigourney leaning against the wall. He smiled, his bushy eyebrows raising above the rim of his glasses.

"You all right there, Miss?" He asked, his voice papery like the pages of a vintage comic book, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Sigourney nodded at him, "Something like that. I'm fine, though. Thanks."

He gave her a nod, then walked past her and out the door. If Sigourney had been more put together, she would have speculated about why a strange man was leaving her land lady's apartment in the middle of the afternoon. Instead, she braved the stairs.

Sitting on the floor next to her front door, scratching Fiske behind the ears, was Loki. He gave her one look and was on his feet. Fiske slinked away to find someone else to smother him with attention.

"Siggy." He said, features wrought with concern.

Sigourney practically swooned. Loki caught her in his arms, supporting her weight. She let her head rest on his shoulder.

"My keys are in my bag." She mumbled into his shirt.

He reached into it and pulled out her key ring first try. She smiled as he fit the right one into the lock without having to ask.

"I suppose you could have just magicked it open?" She asked as he helped her through the door.

"I could have." He agreed, shutting it behind them gently, "But I distinctly remember promising someone that I wouldn't."


	11. Wherein Invitations are Offered and Accepted

Sigourney shrugged out of her bag, still holding onto Loki, and let it fall with a thud to the floor. As though he could read her mind, Loki scooped Sigourney up into his arms and carried her damsel-style to her bed. He deposited her there gently, half looking like he would leave her.

"Stay, alright?" She clutched at his hands as he pulled them away, "Just stay here with me. For a bit."

Loki didn't resist. He lied down next to her, his lean frame between her and the edge of the bed. Sigourney couldn't help herself. She needed him near. She hid her face in the front of his t-shirt, pressing herself against his chest. Loki's arms wrapped around her again to hold her in place. His presence was like an anchor. Sigourney's mind began to clear. They stayed like that for a long time, just lying there in the stillness of Sigourney's apartment. She thought she might fall asleep. But she didn't. She listened to the soft sound of Loki's breathing and felt the way his fingers ideally grazed her back now and again.

Why did you cut Sif's hair?" Sigourney's voice cut through the silence weakly.

A self conscious laugh come from somewhere in the back of Loki's throat, then he said, "Like so many things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And also she tossed one of my spell books down the well."

He let his answer hang in the air for a moment.

Then he asked, tentatively, "How much do you remember of that?"

"Not much." Sigourney admitted, "I remember sitting with her while she cried. She yelled at me. Called me a snake lover."

Loki flinched at this.

Sigourney pressed on, "And I remember... fighting with you about it after. We were in the garden."

"You called me reckless and unfeeling." His voice rolled through his chest like a wave against a rocky shore.

"Yes..." Sigourney thought about this, "I did. I'm sorry."

At this Loki laughed again, "It was a long time ago. And you were right."

Sigourney propped herself up on her elbow. Loki looked up at her, waiting for her to say something. Instead, she studied his perfectly calculated features. Each curve and line was dear to her in a way that filled her chest nearly to bursting. But it wasn't his face.

"Why are you hiding?" She whispered, not thinking about the words as they left her lips.

Loki did not misunderstand her. Rather than fall back into their argument from the night before about why he was on Earth, Loki simply let out a soft sigh. Pale green light glimmered across his skin. In it's wake his face became a rough version of itself. Smudged under-eyes, half healed scrapes, and old scars replaced the perfect mask. Sigourney smiled.

"I like this face better." She told him.

She stared at the scars around his mouth and across his lips. The fine lines that could have only been made with a needle and thread. Sigourney's fingers hovered centimeters from his face, stopped only by the realization of what she had been about to do.

"It's alright." Loki told her, his voice a soft murmur.

Her fingertips brushed along the raised ridged of the scars. Sigourney could feel Loki's eyes on her as she traced the marks on his mouth. His skin was so cold. She smiled again.

"I remember this too." She breathed, "We were under our tree, after your mother had pulled the thread out, and you let me touch your mouth. Just like this."

"Do you understand now?" Loki asked, his voice grazing her fingers.

She thought for a moment. It terrified her to no end, but she thought she finally did understand. Or at least was beginning to. Somehow, her head was filled with two sets of conflicting memories. There was her mundane, ordinary life here on Earth. And under that, locked behind some kind of wall, was another life. A life that had happened somewhere else... with Loki. It was all very _Fire and Hemlock_ which would have amused her if it hadn't been so disturbing.

"I think so." She told him, following a line from the corner of his top lip across to his bottom lip, "Not, everything... but a bit. Enough to know that I know you."

He nodded, "Yes, you know me very well. You know me better than anyone."

That thought amused Sigourney for some reason. She knew he was right, but it was nice to hear him admit it for once.

"Do you remember," Loki ventured carefully, "what else happened that day?"

Sigourney did. It came to her easily. They had been barely more than teenagers at the time. Still kids, really, when she thought about it. They sat in the soft grass under their tree, in the far part of the lower gardens where no one else ever went. Sigourney had gone looking for him and found him there crying alone. Her soft heart had always had a spot for Loki in it. But sitting there together, safe from view behind the lush greenery of the gardens, Sigourney had realized just how much space Loki took up within her heart.

She'd spoken softly to him until he stopped crying and he let her touch the still fresh cuts around his mouth. She could feel his pain through her fingertips. Her gift. It stung her flesh, like sticking herself with her own embroidery meddle again and again. Then she had leaned in close and brushed her lips across his, kissing the hurt away.

She felt her face go warm at the memory. Sigourney looked away, suddenly unable to handle his gaze.

"Yes. I remember." She pulled her hand away, but he caught it in his and pressed her palm to his chest.

"What else do you remember?" His thumb grazed the back of her hand softly as he spoke.

Sigourney thought, her mind working to sort out which memory came from which life, "Bits and pieces. It's all mixed up in my head. But I know I couldn't have dreamt all this. It has to have come from somewhere."

She looked at him again, her eyes meeting his.

"But you can't tell me, can you?" She asked.

Loki's face tensed, no doubt in anticipation of another argument, "No. I don't think I can. Not without hurting you."

"I understand." Sigourney nodded slowly, "At least, I think I do now."

They fell quiet again. Loki stared up at her with a look in his eyes she simply couldn't bare. It was filled with longing and self-discipline. She tucked her head in the place between his shoulder and neck so that she wouldn't have to meet that gaze. Loki's arm draped across her shoulders. He pressed his mouth to the side of her head, a half kiss against her hair.

"Can you answer just one question for me, Loki?" She asked, a thought blossoming.

"I can try." He told her.

"The thing you came to find on Earth," She ventured, slowly, following the line of intuition guiding her, "it was me, wasn't it?"

Loki took a slow breath, then said, "Yes, it is."

Sigourney propped herself back up onto her elbow, "And your 'friends'... they're trying to stop you."

"Yes, they are." He replied, brushing her hair back from her face, "Or, they are now. At first they were only looking for me."

"That's where you went." Sigourney said, clarity coming over her more rapidly now, "When you disappeared. You were trying to..."

"Lead them away from here." Loki nodded.

"It hasn't worked." She told him, "I saw them the other day. And, before, I was in the park and Sif warned me to stay away from you."

"She what?" Loki sat up in his surprise, "She's here?"

"Yes." Sigourney pushed herself the rest of the way up and placed a hand on his shoulder, "I don't think they want anything to do with me. It's you they're most interested in."

"They want to keep us apart." Loki corrected, burying his face in his hands, "And they'll do whatever it takes."

Sigourney thought for a moment. It was Loki they wanted, not her. The wave of intuition rose to its peak within her and she understood exactly what would have to be done. The knowledge of it was a breath of fridged winter air, clear and painful in the hollow of her chest. It made her gasp a little. Loki turned to look at her.

"What is it?" He asked.

Sigourney tried to swallow down the icy pain and said softly, "You can't stay here. You have to go somewhere they can't find you."

Loki shook his head, his mouth open to protest, but Sigourney didn't give him a chance.

"It's the only way." She plunged on, "You're not safe here. You said it yourself, remember? They will kill you if they find you again. You have to go somewhere where you'll be safe. Somewhere far, far away."

Loki stared at her, his eyes full of a confused sort of fear. His lips closed and parted a few times, searching for the right words. Sigourney would have found it funny, the man with the silver tongue finally with nothing to say, if the look on his face hadn't been breaking her heart. The ice in the pit of her chest had thawed, leaving a hollow ache that made it hard to breathe.

Finally, he spoke in barely more than a whisper, "Come with me."

"What?" She gasped softly.

"Siggy, come with me." He shifted, facing her properly and taking both her hands between his, "We'll go somewhere far away, just as you've said."

"I..." She couldn't make her mind work properly.

He squeezed her hands gently, "Siggy, please. I cannot be without you. Not again."

"Because you love me?" Her voice came out in a hitched sort of sob.

"Because I love you." He said, so earnestly it made the hollow ache in her chest all the deeper.

There was only one thing Sigourney could think of to make the ache stop. She closed what little distance there was between herself and Loki, pressing her lips to his. He didn't resist. Loki's arms closed around her, drawing her to him until she molded against the shape of his chest as though she were designed to be there. She kissed him again and again. He drank her in readily, with a thirst that could not be slated. Her fingers lost themselves in the soft, wavy strands of his hair, drawing him closer still. Each kiss became deeper then the last until she was left almost breathless.

Loki pulled away gently and Sigourney's eyes flutter open. He lied back, stretching out across her bed, his arms open to her in an invitation. Sigourney accepted. She lowered herself over him and caught his mouth with hers again and again. Every part of him, every line and angle and curve, was precious to her. She wanted to steep him within her soul so that she would never have to be without him. She kissed his cold, smooth skin as though she were placing stars within the night sky. And every soft gasp and hitched breath that came in response to what she did filled her to bursting.

Later, her head on his shoulder, Sigourney listened to the sound of Loki's heart through his chest. Her fingers absentmindedly brushed along the line of his collarbone. How had she forgotten this? They had lied just like this countless times, tangled together in soft silence. She had to remind herself that there was no risk of being discovered that would pull Loki from her arms; no daybreak negotiations to be had between hurried kisses as one of them tried to dress and sneak back to their own bedchamber. They could simply lie there together with no thoughts as to what tomorrow would bring.

Almost.

Sigourney couldn't help but turn over what Loki had suggested before she changed the nature of their conversation. He had asked her to leave with him and go goodness-knows-where. Lying there, Loki's arms around her and his finger in her hair, all she wanted was to be with him. But small details of what that would mean crept in at the back of her mind. What about her life here? The shop and her family? Being with Loki would mean leaving all that behind and stepping into a life she could only imagine. A life of magic and danger. But there was no way Loki could remain on Earth with her. The threat to his life aside, she knew his nature wouldn't allow it. Loki didn't have the capacity to survive a mortal existence. And Sigourney didn't know if she had the capacity to survive an immortal one.

She supposed she must have managed to do it at some point. Somehow. She had a head full of half memories from another life. A life she must have lived, or else how could she remember it? And people from that life, Loki and Sif and the others, all knew her. They remembered her, even if she hadn't remembered them. The question was, what had happened to make her forget? And why was she on Earth instead of... somewhere else? A sharp pain twinged above her right eyebrow. Sigourney shut her eyes against it, waiting as it slowly faded. She frowned a little to herself, deciding against riddling out such big questions, and shifted so that her forehead rested against the side of Loki's neck.

One of his hands found hers and gently pulled it away from its continued brushing along his collar bone. He pressed Sigourney's palm to his lips softly, smiling against her skin as he kissed her.

"Loki?" She murmured.

"Hmm?" He hummed into her palm.

"Where would we go, if I left with you?" She asked.

He returned her hand to his chest, pressing it gently to the place above his heart, "Anywhere you want. Just name it."

"I'm afraid I'm not terribly well traveled." She beamed as she spoke, "I don't know many places outside this solar system."

"You're right, I'd forgotten." Loki admitted, "Well, in that case I'll just have to take you to some of my favourite worlds. I know a handful of rather beautiful and secluded places."

"I suppose doing anything touristy is out of the question? What with our being fugitives and all?" She teased.

"Absolutely." He teased back, a smile colouring his voice, "But, you know, it's probably for the best. Xandar is so crowded this time of year."

Sigourney laughed, "Maybe we can go during the off-season."

"Perhaps." He chuckled, then paused for a moment before saying more softly, "Then... are you decided?"

"I'm afraid." She breathed.

"I know." He kissed her forehead, "I am too."


	12. In Which a Great Deal Must be Considered

When Sigourney awoke she was alone. She knew she was before she had even opened her eyes. In that place between sleep and awake, she could feel the emptiness of her bed beside her. She jolted up, hair blinding her for a moment before she could rake it back out of her eyes.

On the pillow next to her lay a folded piece of paper with 'Siggy' scrawled across it in neat, narrow letters. She snatched it up and flipped it open, scanning the words there too quickly to actually read. She had to make herself breathe and start again. It said:

_My love,_

_I will return as soon as I am able._

_Yours._

She sat in the stillness of her bedroom, the note loosely in her hand. That part of her that knew Loki better than she knew even herself instinctively told her that he had gone to do something foolish. She recalled the night before and all they had discussed. Had she agreed to go away with him? Sigourney couldn't quite remember. He had asked her and then... She smiled, rubbing her hand over the place where Loki had kissed her neck. She could still feel his cold lips against her skin.

Sigourney got up and showered. Then she dressed and put the kettle on. As it slowly came to a boil, she leaned against the counter. She ran her fingers against the cracks in the tiles where Loki had gripped them the night he'd come back from disappearing. Sigourney thought for a moment, frowning. Had that really only been a day ago? It felt longer. She traced the jagged lines in the tiles and came to terms with the fact that she probably wouldn't get her damages deposit back.

What would she do with the apartment if she left with Loki? What would she do with all her stuff? She looked around the small space, at her books and dishes and furniture. She couldn't possible bring it with her. It wasn't like Uhaul offered interplanetary services. She supposed she could pack it away in a big storage locker somewhere. But the thought of it being cracked open and auctioned off if her payments stopped going through made her cringe. How would she even make payments from goodness-only-knew-where in the universe?

For a brief moment she wondered if her parents could help her. She was trying to work out how to explain that she would be leaving, supposing that saying she wanted to travel again would be believable, when she was struck by a hollowing thought.

They didn't exist.

The realization turned her into a ghost with skin. She knew it was true, but even still she went to the wall phone. Sigourney picked up the receiver like she had so many times before, balancing it between her face and her shoulder. Her hand hovered uselessly over the number keys as the dial tone droned in her ear. Her mind was blank. She couldn't remember the phone number of her parents' house. The house she had grown up in. A house that... didn't exist.

She felt sick. Sigourney slowly returned the receiver to its cradle as the kettle behind her began to whistle. She was alone. She had always been alone. All those phone calls, all those birthday dinners and early morning school drives and late night homework sessions had never happened. They were some kind of trick her distorted memory played on her often enough to make it feel like it had been real. But it wasn't. A sharp pain sounded just above Sigourney's right eyebrow. She pressed her fingertips to it, willing it to go away as the kettle screamed behind her. She whipped around and yanked it off the stove.

What had she just been thinking about? She shook her head and started to fix her tea. She got the box of peppermint tea her mother had given her for her last birthday out of the cupboard. Her mother... Sigourney's breath came in a sharp hitch. That was it. She had realized that her parents weren't real. Or at least, they weren't real in the way she remembered them. How had she forgotten that so quickly? The pain above her brow flared again, but she muscled through it. She knew that she had to have had parents at one point. Elsewise where would she have come from? She pressed her palm above her right eyebrow and clenched her teeth.

The image of her father's smiling face peering down at her as she hid under a library table filled Sigourney's mind. The pain turned all the more sharp. The thought threatened to slip away again. Sigourney clenched her free first tight, pressing it into the counter. She couldn't let this get away from her. She needed to remember. She shut her eyes and held on to the image of her father's face despite the hot, stiff pain.

“You said you would at least make an attempt today.” He had told her in his sympathetic way.

Sigourney, no older than ten, had only shrugged in reply. She knew he was right.

“You did promise, you know. You can’t stay in this library forever.” He reminded her, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

“Mother does.” She protested.

“That’s because it’s my duty.” Her mother’s voice, calm and reasonable as always, came from near by, “Listen to your Father. Go outside. Make friends.”

“You did say you would at least try.” Her father's smile was encouraging as he gazed meaningfully at her.

Sigourney sighed and pushed herself up, crawling out from under the table.

"The other children are in the garden." Her father told her, placing his large hand on her shoulder.

Sigourney sighed again and prepared herself for what she was about to endure. She hated it here. She hadn't wanted to move, but her mother's work demanded it and so the whole of her ten-year-old life had been uprooted. Was that not enough? Why must she be made to endure the torment of trying to make friends? It wasn't as though the other children even wanted her. But she had promised she would try. So what else could she do but go and brave their mockery and scorn for a few minutes before coming back and hiding under the table again. Sigourney's mother finally looked up from the books she had spent the morning pouring over and laughed a little.

"My goodness, child." She shook her head, smiling affectionately, "We are not sending you into battle. You aren't being shipped off to the Valkyrie. You needn't look so grave as that."

Sigourney, still leaning against her kitchen counter, couldn't help but smile a little at the memory. She had felt so hard-done-by in that moment. Really, she knew she had just been scared.

This memory of her parents felt solid enough for her to touch. Sigourney half believed that if she just reached out far enough she could press her fingers to it like the surface of a mirror. The pain above her brow eased as the memory solidified in her mind. She glanced down to where her golden bracelet sat around her wrist. Her parents had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday. But unlike the tea, she knew that memory was real. She read the rune inscription, Ever Loved, and knew that they were real. They existed somewhere in the universe. Sigourney could feel it. She wasn't alone. She just had to find them.

The wall in Sigourney's mind gave way enough for other memories to come through. They came in a flood. Some things she understood. Her mother reading to her, playing in the lower gardens, sharing secrets with Sif, laying in a bed with Loki. Other memories she didn't understand. A woman hugging her while they both cried, people avoiding her gaze in a banquet hall, and the circular gilded chamber.

She was just beginning to try and sort out some of these stranger memories when her cellphone buzzed in the next room.

"Shit." Sigourney cut out under her breath.

She raced to reach it before the call ended. It was Lavender. Sigourney knew the reason for the call before she put the phone to her ear.

"Where are you?" Came Lavender's voice from the other end.

"I'm sorry." Sigourney replied, scrambling to gather her bag and a jacket, "I'm on my way. I lost track of time, but I'll be there in ten minutes."

"You had me worried." Lavender said back, her voice only just losing it's concerned edge, "Ten minutes. If you're not here by then I'll send out a search party."

The line went dead. Sigourney shoved her phone into her jacket pocket as she crambed her feet into her boots, not bothering to pull the laces tight. She left the apartment and her half fixed tea still on the kitchen counter.

She nearly fell down the stairs to the foyer because of her slack-laced boots. Mrs Hult, who was watering the plants there, raised an eyebrow at her. She was barefoot, wearing a long floral dress. Her silver-white hair was swept back from her kind, lined face in a low twist. And her keen, dark eyes stood out starkly against her pale complexion.

"Late, are we?" She teased, her thin voice just touched with laughter, "Your young man left this morning in quiet the rush too."

Sigourney stopped half way to the door, her jacket hanging from where she wore it on only one arm, "My young man? You saw him?"

"Oh, there's no need to be embarrassed." Mrs Hult waved a hand.

"No, I'm just..." Sigourney pulled her jacket on the rest of the way, shifting her bag, "I just wondered if you noticed how he looked when he left? Did he seem worried or upset at all?"

"Had a row, did you?" Mrs Hult took her hand and squeezed it sympathetically, "It will pass."

"No, nothing like that." Sigourney assured her.

"Well, in that case he looked rather pleased with himself." Mrs Hult turned back to her plants.

Sigourney's mind worked quickly. Perhaps Loki hadn't gone to do something fool hearty after all. She wanted to hold onto that hope, but her intuition told her better. She thanked Mrs Hult and ducked through the front door. It was raining out. As she crossed the slick street, she promised herself that if she were to leave with Loki they would come up with some way to contact one another when they weren't together. Space cellphones, if that was a thing at all. And they would have to have a long conversation about his disappearing without any explanation. Twice was too many times.

When Sigourney reached the shop Lavender was leaning against the door. She smiled and crossed her arms, her mint coloured raincoat buckling. Sigourney rummaged through her bag for her keys as quickly as she could, still feeling frantic.

"You know, when I tell my friends about stuff like this they're deeply jealous. Their bosses throw a fit if their even a minute late. And here I am, waiting on you." Lavender teased.

"I over slept." Sigourney tried to explain, realizing that she hadn't even bothered checking the time when she'd woken up, "Though, I'm glad you're the envy of teenage employees everywhere. If I could afford to hire them all I would."

"Oh, please don't. I enjoy being special." Lavender smiled all the more, then asked with a hint of the concern that had tinted her voice on the phone, "Late night?"

Sigourney nodded, "Yeah. And... just a weird morning."

They went inside the shop. Sigourney dumped her bag on the counter and flipped on the over head lights. They cut through the rainy dimness, flooding the shop in cold artificial light that seemed to glare more sharply than it ever had before. Sigourney paused as she took off her coat, swimming through her too-full mind while trying to remember how to be an ordinary person. Had the book shop always been this small? This pedestrian? She glanced around, seeing it now as something else entirely. She knew every shelf and volume. But somehow she was a stranger. She hung her coat up next to Lavender's and tried to shuffle through the papers on the counter.

"Can I ask you something sort of strange?" She asked as Lavender hopped up to sit on the edge of the counter.

Lavender shrugged, "Sure. I live for strange."

Sigourney had to think for a moment. She turned over her words carefully as Lavender watched, waiting.

Finally, she asked slowly, "Have you read books where the main character discovers a new, magical world?"

"What, like_ Alice in Wonderland_?" Lavender raised an eyebrow, "Sure."

"Well, you know how sometimes the protagonist has to decide if they want to go back to their ordinary lives or stay in the new world?" Sigourney crossed her arms tight to keep her hands from shaking, "I was just wondering, if it were you, what would you do?"

Lavender thought about this for a moment, swinging her legs a little. Sigourney stared at the floor. For some reason the waiting was unbearable. She felt as though the only thing keeping her from flying apart was how tightly her arms were crossed.

After what seemed like ages, Lavender said, "I dunno, I guess it depends on what kind of magical world I had found and what sort of character I was. Like, is the life I would have in the magical world better than the one I already have? Or is this a kind of European-Medieval-There's-No-Soap-Or-Penicillin deal?"

Sigourney couldn't help but smile, "That's a really good point."

"Basically, if my life was going to be better and my leaving wouldn't hurt anyone, then I'd totally go." Lavender concluded with another shrug.

Sigourney considered this piece of incite.

"What would you do?" Lavender asked.

"I don't know." Sigourney said softly, still smiling as she let her arms uncross themselves, "That's why I asked."

Sigourney turned over what Lavender had said again and again through the course of the day. If she went with Loki, would her life be better for it? She tried to weigh the possibilities in her mind, but it was difficult to compare what she already had to what she didn't fully yet know. The biggest draw to going was the possibility for answers. To pick apart the mystery of her memories and find out why she was like this. Find out who she was. And, of course, she could be with Loki through it all. But there was a deep rooted fear of the unknown. The possibility of discovering something about herself that she wouldn't like and being suddenly thrown in above her head with no option of going back petrified her.

But would her life be better? That was the question that cut her open without warning when she really thought about it. Sigourney had always thought she had a pretty good life. She had her parents, her apartment, and the shop after all. Sigourney had always been content in taking up her tiny corner of the world without ever asking for more than she had. But the veil had lifted and now she saw her life with new eyes. Her parents, as she knew them, weren't real. Her primary relationships in life were imagined. She didn't even really have any friends. She went home every night to her empty apartment and filled her head with books to block out the solitude she was imprisoned in.

The shop wasn't any better. Sigourney knew now that it was little more than a child's blanket-fort castle, with books stacked around the edges to keep the monsters of her own loneliness at bay. She had built it, book by book, to keep herself safe and separate from the outside world. How many people a week even came in? And of them, how many did she know? How many had she talked to beyond the stiff politeness of the everyday? None. They passed in and out of her life like shadows across the wall, never touching anything enough to really change it. And she had been content to let them drift by.

Sigourney glanced at Lavender who was diligently sorting paperbacks from hardcovers out of a box she'd found in the broom cupboard. Lavender had always been the one person Sigourney had ever been close to. And even then she always kept her at arm's length, telling herself that Lavender was too young to be an actual friend. That the divide between them caused by their difference in age was insurmountable. That they weren't actually that close because of it. But none of that was true. The divide between them was of Sigourney's making. She had chosen to close herself off and actively did so day in and day out. Lavender was an irreplaceable strand within the fabric of Sigourney's life. She saw her everyday, relied on her heavily, and benefited from the relationship they had. And yet how much of her life had Sigourney actually shared with Lavender? A devastating precious little.

Sigourney's eyes stung with the onset of tears and she turned quickly to the bank of plants in the window, busying herself with watering them until the threat of crying had gone. But the question in her mind made that tough. If Sigourney left, would her going hurt anyone? Mrs Hult would find someone else to rent to and Fisk would probably bum breakfast off of anyone just as happily as he had with Sigourney. She didn't even really know her other neighbors beyond passing them in the hall now and again.

But there was Lavender.

Sigourney knew that she was not the center of Lavender's life. Far from it, in fact. Lavender was her own person, with goals and dreams Sigourney had never allowed herself to be vulnerable enough to learn. Sigourney didn't want to assume so much as to believe that her leaving would cause Lavender to miss her as she would a friend. She knew she took up very little space in Lavender's world. But Sigourney also knew that she was Lavender's primary source of income. An income that all went into a savings account for Lavender's post secondary education. If Sigourney left, she would be depriving Lavender of what little security there was in her weekly paycheck. There was no question of Lavender's ability to be hired by someone else, a someone who could undoubtedly afford to pay her far better. But Sigourney still felt she had an obligation to her. If she chose to leave, Sigourney would do everything within her power to ensure that Lavender would be alright.


	13. Wherein Arrangements are Made and a Message is Sent

Sigourney had decided to shut the shop early so she could go to the bank before closing. She'd had a great many questions to ask and a plan to put in place. On the bus over, she'd finalized the details of that plan as best she could. At the bank her questions had been answered by a patient woman in a teal pantsuit who explained the math side of things nearly as well as Lavender would have. By the end of the meeting, Sigourney had made the necessary adjustments to her finances and put in place a system for the future that looked like it would work well enough.

The bus on the way back home had been packed full of people. Sigourney spent the ride squashed between a businessmen talking loudly on his cellphone and a frazzled nanny who hadn't been able to collapse her stroller. The businessman was obviously trying to look as much like Tony Stark as was humanly possible and smelt strongly of aftershave. But the two-year-old in the nanny's stroller was cute and very fond of making faces.

When Sigourney finally got home, the apartment was empty. She ignored the knot in her stomach by clearing up the abandoned tea-mess that was still on the counter from that morning. The mug clanked against the inside of the sink while she washed it, the soft sound filling the emptiness of the apartment. Putting the mug away in the cabinet, she turned to her kitchen table and set to work on the next phase of her plan.

Sigourney's tightly looped handwriting filled her notepad, a letter of recommendation for Lavender slowly taking shape. She hunched over the notepad. Her urgency brought the words to her mind far more quickly than her hand could write them down. But she fought to capture her thoughts all the same. It had to be perfect. It was important. Lavender was important.

It was dark outside by the time she finally sat down to type up the letter. The well worn keys of her secondhand typewriter clacked steadily as she diligently copied down her nearly illegible handwriting. Twice she had to white out a mistake because she couldn't distinguish the difference between her own b's and d's. But she didn't think anyone would notice. She had always meant to invest in a proper laptop. But they were so expensive she had always put it off. Besides, she had a phone and the library for anything that might require a computer. But the library had closed hours ago, so Sigourney sat at her kitchen table clacking away on the typewriter Mrs Hult had given her after finding it in storage.

When the letter was typed out, Sigourney clipped it together and tucked it into a large manila envelop along with a cheque for the whole of Lavender's pay for the following month. She had written it out at the bank preemptively, just in case she began to forget things like she had that morning. Sigourney set the envelope, labeled _'Lavender'_, on the counter next to her tea kettle. That way, if she did forget during the course of the night, she would be reminded.

Then and only then did Sigourney let herself fully indulge in the unsettling fact that Loki still hadn't come back. The edge of every second was filled with the possibility of there being a knock at the door. But somehow she knew that waiting for him would only prolong his absence. The universe, she was beginning to understand, was tricksy like that.

'_Watched pots..._' She thought, turning away from the door.

She retrieved the note he had left her that morning from where she had stashed it on her bookshelf, tucked into her copy of _The Perilous Gard_. Reading it again Sigourney noted the part that said he would be 'back as soon as he was able.' With Loki that could mean anything from a few hours to a few days. Or even more. She thought back to the first time he disappeared and how distraught she had been. Surely he wouldn't put her through that again? Not now that he knew what it had done to her. Not after they had only just patched everything up between them. As she thought about it Sigourney realized again that he had only just come back the day before last. Somehow, it really did feel much longer. So much had changed since then.

She had remembered half a life time.

Sigourney slowly paced up and down the length of her apartment, still clutching Loki's note in one hand. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor as she went along. If the mother Sigourney remembered from her ordinary life had been there, she would have joked about wearing a trench through the floor with pacing. Would her real mother, the one out there in the universe somewhere, have done the same? Sigourney didn't know. So she kept on pacing, thumbing her gold bracelet as an endless list of questions raced through her mind again. She needed answers. She needed to leave with Loki and learn who she really was.

Eventually, Sigourney abandoned pacing as a method for summoning Loki. She sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her bookshelf. Her copy of _Norse Myths_ stared back at her, it's dark teal spine daring her to pull it off the shelf. It had been a gift from her grandmother. Or at least, that's what she had always thought. Where it came from didn't really matter. It was just another piece of the jumbled up puzzle of her memories. What taunted her were the stories that lay inside. They were the stories she had known all her life. Stories she had grown up with and play-acted with her friends. Stories she knew inside out.

When Thor saved that town in New Mexico from being flattened everything changed. Sigourney remembered with perfect clarity how she and her parents had watched the news together. How that larger than life figure, who called down lightning from the sky, was suddenly on their too small television screen. That night, under the covers of her bed, Sigourney had re-read every myth by flashlight until the sun came up. She spent the summer she was sixteen wondering how much of those stories were actually true. And every time a thunderstorm rolled in across the prairies or came down from the mountains she had watched for that same figure among the flashes of lightning.

When Loki attacked New York almost exactly a year later Sigourney had been visiting both sets of her grandparents in rural Scandinavia. When she came home and learned what had happened, she re-read the myths again. She watched the news footage from the attack and tried to rationalize how the laughing face on the screen could belong to the mostly harmless trickster in the stories. It seemed impossible that they could be the same person. The Loki she had known all her life, the Loki in the stories, was different. Sigourney spent the year she was seventeen looking for that laughing face in crowds, just in case. Who could have imagined that she would be waiting with pounding heartbeats for that same face to walk in through her front door?

The temptation to read the myths again made Sigourney's fingers itch. But she couldn't bring herself to pull them off the shelf. Not this time. She had grown up with the figures in those pages. Not just as characters in the stories she knew by heart, but as people. They had been her friends. She remembered playing Valkyries with Sif and Thor, running wild through gardens while wielding toy swords. And she remembered watching from behind bookshelves as Loki studied. She had been too shy to speak to him. If Sigourney read those stories again... would she find herself there too? The thought paralyzed her.

Who _was_ she?

If she just concentrated long enough, perhaps she could remember. Sigourney closed her eyes as she let out a slow breath. She was standing in an airy bedchamber looking out of the long, open window. A breeze coming in from the orchard caught the gauzy curtains. They billowed like the sails of a long-ship, playing with the afternoon light. Out the window she could see Loki wandering about in the orchard. She had smiled to herself. Turning to the door, she stopped to look in the mirror. But her reflection was blurred. The figure staring back at her was watery and out of focus, a vaguely human shape smudged across the surface of the mirror like an impressionist painting. She couldn't see her own face. Just the haze of her ash-blonde hair and the dark blue of her gown. Sigourney took a slow step towards the mirror. If she could just concentrate hard enough then she could-

Searing pain flared behind her closed eyes. The memory melted away with the heat of it. She bent double, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. The world shifted off its axis and Sigourney fell to one side. She lay motionless among the blankets on her bed, the force of her hands against her eyes the only thing keeping them from oozing out of her head. Or so it felt. The pain rose to a crescendo and a cry broke from Sigourney's lips. She would die. She knew she would. This was it.

She waited for the end to come, but it never did. The pain faded slowly. It eased enough for her ragged, gulping breaths to turn steady and even. After a few more moments, she felt confident enough to try taking her hands away from her eyes. They didn't ooze out of her head. Instead, the pressure she had applied made her vision go fuzzy. She blinked it and the last of her pain away. What had she just been doing? The pain had come on so suddenly that Sigourney couldn't remember. She blinked until her bedroom came back into focus. Then she sat up slowly. Her head spun with the motion, threatening to send her right back down again.

For several moments Sigourney could do nothing but sit hunched on the edge of her bed, waiting to either be sick or pass out. Fortunately, neither happened. She brushed a trembling hand through her hair, pushing it back from her suddenly clammy forehead. She shook all over. Still hunched over the edge of her bed, Sigourney ran through everything she had done that day. It had been nothing special. She'd gone to the bank, worked at the shop, woken up late. Why had she woken up late? She couldn't remember. Sigourney pressed her still shaking hand to her brow. She had been with someone that morning. They had...

Loki.

A small wave of pain made her gasp, but she managed to hold on to the thought. Of course. Loki. She had been with him the night before. And that was why she had woken up late. A cold sort of fear hovered around her, settling softly on her shoulders. She had forgotten everything so quickly. So easily. One flash of pain and it was all gone as though it had never been. She couldn't risk that happening again.

Sigourney forced herself to stand. Then she fought her way to her kitchen table by way of holding on to every piece of furniture between her bed and it. Once there, she grabbed the note book she had written her first draft of Lavender's letter in. She flipped to a clean page and began madly scribbling down everything that had happened to her since the day Loki first walked in to the bookshop. She wrote as much as she could. Some things she remembered with perfect ease. Others she hardly remembered at all beyond a vague sort of notion. But if she could put enough of it down on paper it wouldn't be lost if she forgot it completely. She could remind herself of everything that had happened. Of everything she had learned.

When Sigourney finished, she read over the pages she'd filled. She was just amending a line when a shimmering green light caught the corner of her eye. Her head snapt up in time to see Loki materializing out of thin air in the middle of her kitchen. She leapt to her feet, nearly knocking the table over in her rush.

"Loki!" She cried, relief and surprise forming a heady mixture within her.

He looked different. His face was too perfect again, the scars and flaws hidden behind a mask of illusion. It didn't matter. Sigourney threw her arms around his neck, but they closed around empty air as they passed through his body. She didn't understand. And when she looked up to his face for answers she found only a deep rooted sadness upon his perfect face.

"Siggy." He said softly.

She tried to touch him again and her fingers created pale green waves that rippled across his body where her hand passed through his chest.

"You're not really here." She breathed.

"No." He replied, "Siggy, something has happened."

"What? What is it? Where are you?" She stared up at his face, the feeling of dread that had built in her all day rising to its full measure.

"Siggy, they've found me." He told her softly, "I'm being held at their camp."

Ice ran through her veins.

"They're going to take me back to Asgard." Loki went on, calm and composed despite what he was saying.

"When?" She went to take his hands and her fingers passed through him again.

"Tomorrow night." Loki replied, glancing at where she had tried to touch him.

"I'll find you." Sigourney said in a rush, plans flooding her still aching mind, "When I saw them, they were in the park. That must be where their camp is. I'll come find you and-"

"Siggy." He pleaded, making her stop short, "Siggy, there's nothing you can do. I've... I've sent you this projection so that we can say goodbye."

"No." She shook her head, resolve replacing the ice in her blood, "No, I'll find you. I can't just let you go. Not after everything. Not after I've started to remember."

He looked as though her words were an arrow straight through his heart, but his voice retained its calculated composure when he said, "Siggy, I haven't much time. There's nothing you can do. It's too dangerous. Now, please, just listen."

She chewed the inside of her lip and waited.

"I love you." He told her, his voice catching, "And I will find a way back to you. I promise."

His shape began to flicker with pale green light.

"Siggy, I love you." He said, more frantically as his projection faded, "I love you."

And he was gone.


	14. In Which Sigourney is Brave

Sigourney shrugged into her backpack, pulling it on over her sage-green coat. Glancing through the window she could see that hoards of kids in costumes where already starting to prowl the streets in search of candy. Hallowe'en would not have been the night Sigourney would have picked to attempt to rescue the man who loved her. But she had no choice in the matter.

It was still early, the sun only just descending towards the horizon. The minutes had passed like hours all day as Sigourney prepared. And now they had all but ground to a halt. The weight of her backpack seemed to be the only thing keeping her from exploding outside of her own body, going everywhere all at once. It was filled with the things she would need. Clothes, her notebook, a bit of food and a few of her books. Essential items she couldn't leave behind. One way or another, Sigourney knew that she probably wouldn't be coming back to her apartment.

The letter for Lavender had been entrusted to Mrs Hult that morning. Sigourney knew that it was in good hands. It was only a shame that there wasn't time to say goodbye properly. Sigourney stared at her phone where it sat face down on the kitchen table, bouncing her leg in an attempt to shake the nervous energy of anticipation out of herself. She had considered texting Lavender, was still considering it, but she couldn't make herself do it. How could she express all those unsaid things in only a few sentences? How could she say all the things she should have said in one phone call? Perhaps she would just figure it out as she went.

Sigourney reached for her phone, but froze at the sound of pawing at the window behind her. She whipped around in her chair and her backpack caught on the frame, nearly sending her to the floor. When she managed to right herself she could see that it was only Fiske. She sighed as she straightened, disappointment flooding in to fill the gap where her breath had been. She knew, as she went to open the window, that there was no reason for her to have thought that it would be Loki.

"I don't have any dinner for you." She told the cat as it slinked around her ankles.

Fiske didn't seem too disturbed by this fact. He only wandered past her into the apartment. Sigourney followed him and managed to scoop him up into her arms. She scratched him behind his ears and murmured a few nonsense words of affection as he basked in her undivided attention. Well, at least now she wouldn't have to wait alone. Sitting herself back down at the table, Fiske on her lap, Sigourney watched as the street outside her window grew steadily darker and darker.

It was very quiet in the apartment by the time the streetlights came on. Sigourney felt as though she were preforming some kind of secret rite or sacred ceremony as she got to her feet. Fiske jumped from her lap and escorted her to the door of the apartment. Sigourney flipped off the lights with all the solemnity of a high priestess. Then she walked out the front door. For perhaps the first time in her life she didn't have to spend five or so minutes rooting through her bag in order to find her keys. She simply pulled them out of her pocket. And as she shut the front door, she tortured herself with one last glance at all her things standing alone in the dark. Sigourney locked the door, the sweet pang of sorrow heavy under her lungs, and turned down the hall. Fiske walked beside her as she descended the stairs and did not break from her side until she stepped out into the night.

The air was sharp and smelt heavily of plant decay and the coming snow. It's chilled fingers clung to Sigourney as she jogged across the street to the park. Her heart told her that it was where Loki and his friends would be. It was almost as though she was following the cord that extended out beyond her body, linking her to Loki. She could feel its pull in the center of her chest. She only hoped that trusting it was the right thing to do.

When she found the place where she had seen Sif and the others the other day she stopped. But there was no one there and no sign that there ever had been. She paced through the tightly knit trees, her boots kicking up the dry leaves that littered the ground in thick drifts. Above, the faint glimmer of stars washed out by city lights could only just be seen. Sigourney knew the park well enough, but she knew that it would take ages to search every corner of it. And she was beginning to run out of time.

Sigourney searched and searched as darkness settled in around her. What had Loki meant when he said that they would be taking him that night? Had he meant that they would be gone the moment the sun set? Or did it simply mean that he would be taken sometime before the sun rose? Sigourney ran among the inky shapes of trees, her boots pounding the dry grass like a mantra. She would search all night until she either found him or the sun came up. It was the only thing she could do.

As she darted through a clearing something caught the toe of Sigourney's boot. She fell, face-forward, to the ground. Cold, sharp pain shot through her hands and knees where they collided with the dirt. Pushing herself up, she glanced back to see what had tripped her. There, etched deep into the dirt, was a kind of pattern. It spread out around her all across the clearing in knots and lines that formed circle.

This was it.

Sigourney stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees as she looked around at the intricate pattern. This was where it would happen. She just knew it. Conviction settled into the pit of her chest as she hurried into the trees that ringed the clearing. Now that she had found the place, all she had to do was wait. Sigourney settled herself down among the underbrush and wrapped her arms around herself. She would sit and watch and wait. And then she would rescue Loki. Nothing would stop her.

She didn't know how long she waited. Night stole in properly over the park and seeped down still and quiet between the trees. Above, the moon shone just enough to illuminate the patterned circle in the clearing. The silvery-blue light turned the world unearthly. And an electrical sort of energy hung in the air. But still, Sigourney had to wait.

Eventually, the soft jingling of metal sounded somewhere to Sigourney's left. She took in a sharp breath as she strained to see the figures who entered into the clearing. First came the quiet man with long dark hair. He now wore black and purple armour that clanked and clinked as he walked. Next came the man whose red hair and beard were like the mane of a lion. He too was now wearing armour of brownish-orange and bronze. Then came the blond man in shinning armour of yellow and gold. And with him was Loki all bound in silver chains with a muzzle strapped to his face. Sigourney didn't wait to see where Sif was.

She shot out from the underbrush and into the clearing, her sole intent to grab a hold of Loki so that they could both run for their lives into the night. When he saw her his green eyes went wide and he stopped short. Before the other three men could register what was happening, Sigourney had nearly covered the distance to Loki. A strong pair of hands grabbed her by the backpack and forced Sigourney to the ground before she could reach him. She struggled against Sif's hold, kicking and wriggling to get free. At the same time the men in armour shouted to one another while feet shuffled against the dirt and leaves. Something was happening with Loki, but Sigourney, her face pressed into the ground, couldn't see what. Animal sounds filled the air in the clearing and Sigourney twisted out from under Sif's hold long enough to see Loki's body glimmering with pale green light.

"Do not lose him!" Sif ordered, "The enchantment will not let him get free of those chains, whatever shape he takes. But do not let him get away from you!"

Loki's voice filled the clearing in a chesty cry as he fought to change into a snake. Whatever enchantment the chains had, they were hurting him. Sigourney tore free from Sif's grasp, shrugging out of her backpack, and launched herself across the rest of the clearing. She flung her arms around the blinding green light that encased Loki's body and held tight to him as he tried to change his shape again.

This time he nearly became a wolf. Hands tried to pull Sigourney off of him, but she locked her grip around his neck firmly and would not be shaken. He twisted and writhed under her grasp in a mass of teeth and fur. But Sigourney knew that he wouldn't hurt her. Loki cried out once more and his body dissolved into light again as he tried to shift into a magpie. Sigourney held on to feathers and skin and wings as he changed within her arms. The strong hands and arms trying to separate her from Loki wouldn't yield. But still she clung to him.

"Get her off!" Someone shouted, "It's nearly time!"

Overlapping voices mixed with Loki's next cry of pain as he shifted again. Sigourney had to shut her eyes against the light that consumed his body. He changed and Sigourney felt his proper shape come into form under her. When she opened her eyes again, her arms were fast around his neck. Loki collapsed into her, weary and shaking, and they fell together to the ground. Sigourney shrugged out of her coat, wrapping it around Loki's shoulders tightly as though it would protect him from further harm.

And then the world burst into a riot of light and infinite colour. Sigourney thought she would be sick as her body was loosed from the hold of the earth and her mind railed against the incomprehensible motion. She held fast to Loki. Surrounding her was the all consuming rainbow she had been swallowed by again and again in her dreams. Only this time it was real. She clung to Loki and burred her face in the spot between his neck and his shoulder. It was over in an instant. Everything stopped and there was ground, hard and cold, under her again. Sigourney pulled away from Loki tentatively, her eyes dancing with the after-image of colour.

The gilded chamber from her dream surrounded them. And standing on the dias, looking down at them, was a man in armour with a sword.

Sif straightened up and glanced to where Sigourney still clung to Loki, "If I had known what would pass this night, I would have plucked out his eyes long ago and stopped him from ever beholding her. Think what trouble could have been spared."

"What is this?" The man with the sword said, bewildered by what he saw before him, "She ain't meant to be here."

"We know, Scurge!" Sif snapt.

The conversation dissolved into a chorus of angry voices as it went on around Sigourney. But she couldn't understand what was being said. Pain, hot and sharp and hard, had ignited behind her right eye. Sigourney pressed the heel of her hand against it in an attempt to dull the agony that took hold of her. All she could see were the sweeping lines and curves of the gilded chamber as they blurred and bent together. Somewhere in the very back of her mind she was vaguely aware that her dream must have been a memory. But the thought slipped away as pain wedged itself into her mind. She couldn't think. Couldn't remember.

Where was she? What had just happened? She tried to take in her surroundings, but she couldn't make any sense of the blinding gold room or the fairytale figures that surrounded her. She had been looking for something. For someone. The man on the floor beside her, muzzled and bound in chains, leaned in close so that she had no choice but to look at him. His green eyes were full of an expression she couldn't place. She felt that she knew him. She knew his face. But who was he? She brushed her fingers along his brow and against the muzzle strapped over his mouth. He was so familiar. And the way he looked at her... She wanted to tell him that she was alright just so he would stop. But she couldn't make her mouth work for some reason. He looked so distraught, thrashing against his bonds and jerking his head this way and that, his eyes wide and watery.

The world tilted just enough for the cold metal floor of the gilded chamber to catch her. She didn't fight it. Nor did she fight the hands that were suddenly grasping her arms. The pain in her head blossomed into searing fire as the dark edges of her vision closed in around her. For a moment there was only the blinding white crack of pain. And then there was nothing.


End file.
